


The Lost Boy's Book of Dreams

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Series: For Want of a Nail [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bit of a scrapbook story, F/M, attempts at fluffy realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-01-19 00:30:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1448683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal and Emma cross the city limits into Tallahassee on the back of a lot of dreams, a lot of love, and the belief that just this once things might just go their way. But sometimes the unexpected happens, and sometimes life has it's way of surprising you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We sang ever song that driver knew

Tallahassee, it turns out, is landlocked, and the closest beach an hour's drive away. 

Emma really doesn't mind. All she feels is the security of the box of cash they got for the watches, safely tucked into an envelope in her duffel bag. the gentle pressure of Neal's hand on her thigh, her wrist, her waist, seemingly unable to stop touching her in some way, and the serene, bubbling joy of the thought that just this once, things might just go their way. 

The luxury of being able to eat hot food again is one they have both looked forward. There's a truck stop diner on the interstate outside of town, and they stop for a long lunch. 

It's cramped and the booths are sticky, and the decor incredibly tacky, but the food is the best Emma has ever had. She can't remember the last time she had a piece of fried chicken, three of them even, much less potatoes and vegetables and a whole biscuit to herself.  
Their waitress is a dark haired woman in her fifties whose clipped on name tag on the front of her ridiculously orange uniform reads “Dottie”. She's kind and attentive, and the three strike up a conversation about where they're headed. 

“We got married a few months ago, and we finally got the money to move out of my father's house” Neal explains. 

“Any particular reason to pick Florida? Cause a lot of folks don't seem to expect the swamp or the bugs so they hit up Disneyland and take back off”

“It was kind of a flight of fancy” Emma continues “we thought we'd just let fate guide us or something” it does sound pretty stupid right now, but Dottie doesn't seem to think it odd. 

They'd both been almost overwhelmed at the menu. Too many months of stolen candy and sandwiches spiced up with pocketed condiments from a variety of restaurants, occasionally broken up the odd value menu hamburgers or day old cookies

Neal teases her for ordering hot chocolate with whipped cream but she doesn't care. The creamy sweetness, and Neal's laugh, warm her from head to toe. 

They splurge on dessert, even though Dottie cocks her eyebrow when Neal asks if they have pumpkin pie.

"It's March darlin', we just got apple and peach"

Emma rolls her eyes "Excuse my husband, he was dropped on his head as a baby. We'll have the peach". 

Neal's eyes twinkle even as he pouts at her insult, and it keeps up after the waitress returns with their pie.

"What?" Emma asks, stuffing a bite into her mouth. Oh, sweet, juicy sugared peaches, mana from heaven....

"It's just you seem very comfortable calling me your husband now. I thought it was just a good cover"

Emma blushes over her pie. That particular lie, that had come so easily during cons- very rarely did people question a newlywed couple traveling by car- now seemed so incredibly real. Dangerously so. 

She distracts him by stealing a bite of his pie. Let them cross that bridge when they come to it.

Neal leaves a generous tip. Emma makes a point to thank Dottie, remembering her own short stint as a server back in Maine, and the woman presses an extra slice of pie in a to go box on them, wishing them luck.

They cross the city limits at 6:25 that evening. Emma writes the time and date down on a yellow notepad that had been left on the diner booth seat. She's never been the kind to keep a journal, but she thinks that now, when her real life is about to begin, that she'll want to remember the important things. 

March 29, 6:25 PM.

It's warm, unexpectedly so for spring, especially to Emma, a lifelong survivor of frigid Maine. Warm enough that they decide to spend their last night in the Bug, parked near a playground. They make love with both the windows rolled down, and after, Emma stretches her bare feet out the door into the night air. 

Neal is laid out underneath her, one finger playing with her hair. They're both still mostly naked, but Emma pulled a blanket over them just in case anyone came by. 

"Give me that notepad you had" Neal says. 

When Emma reaches under the front seat armrest for it she remarks "You better not be making a list of all the places we've done it". 

He laughs "But it will such a more fun list now that it'll have more places than the back seat or the front seat"

Emma giggles too "There's the hood- don't forget the hood"

"Or that alley in Tuscon" 

"Or that picnic table" 

"The park bench was fun"

"Don't forget the ground"

"You liked the ground" 

She snorts "I did"

"Cause you weren't the one with bugs crawling up your butt the whole time" 

She swats him with the notepad before handing it to him 

"If you'd remembered to grab the blanket you wouldn't have had that problem."

She takes off her glasses and tucks them in the glove box before curling back up on Neal's chest. 

"Write whatever you want but I'm going to sleep. We'll start apartment hunting tomorrow."

"Too bad it looks like the beach is out of the question now"

"Maybe we can find a place with a pool at least" 

And as Emma sleeps, Neal sketches. Emma's feet still stick out the window, accompanied by a perfectly placed palm tree, accompanied by the stars coming out into the deep midnight blue of the night sky.

There are a lot of stars here, more than Neal could usually see in the city. More than he's seen since...

No, he's not going to think about that, not tonight.

The lines flow out from the pen almost with Neal's control it seems. The scene before him, this girl he loves,  
sleeping content, reproduced on the lined yellow paper. 

More pictures fill the page after he's done. Ridiculous things he knows. Smaller than the first, but dancing around it tantalizingly. A little house, by the ocean. A Christmas tree next to a huge roaring fireplace. A Christmas tree surrounded by a gaggle of faceless children. 

Even now, with a chance at a whole new life ahead of him, he knows that these things are just dreams. 

He writing the name he has taken in this land at the top of the page. After a moment, he adds Emma's too. Then, seized by compulsion, a title of sorts.

Book of Dreams.

Gently, so as not to wake Emma, Neal returns the pad to the passenger side's floor. He settles back against the door, cushioned by the cheap blankets they've accumulated, and lets himself fall asleep.


	2. She was lookin for the home I hope she'll find

The apartment they find isn't amazing- it's pretty cramped, shares a wall with a neighbor with at least four small noisy dogs and has hideous shag carpeting. But it's clean, and quiet, and came at a very reasonable rate with a kind landlady who looked at the two of them with the gaze of a doting relative. Compared to where Emma lived when she first was on her own, it's downright liveable. 

And there is a public pool, a few blocks away.

Emma buys a drugstore camera the day they move their meager possessions in. The apartment came with a small wire framed bed and mattress and an especially ugly (but extremely comfortable) couch. Between those, and the mess of things that have been living in the trunk of the bug it's already begun to look more like a home. The picture she   
snaps of their bedroom just before sunset, when the big window that usually just showed the corner of another building became filled with golden sunlight that flowed in onto the soft flowered comforter she'd rescued from a dumpster, is clipped to the second page of the notepad that Neal's taken to carrying around. 

And if Neal sees her tape the picture in, he doesn't say anything. Possibly because she grabs him by the arm and drags him into the apartment's shower even thought it's not even dark outside yet. 

"We don't NEED to share the shower anymore, but we CAN" she says, and she strips him and turns the water on hot. 

The water stays hot fairly long, and the two scrub the grease and dirt of the street from their bodies, let those days run straight down the drain. 

If it goes lukewarm as Neal has her bent over, arms around her belly and mouth on her neck, Emma doesn't notice a bit.

After, when Neal's toweling himself off, and complaining to Emma about how he smells like her cheap apple blossom shampoo now, he asks

"Hungry?"

Emma's stomach growls, even as her brain starts to drift, they ate their pie this morning, and now it's close to dusk 

"Already?".

"Always" she says bitterly. She wonders if this is going to be a thing. Getting used to eating regularly again. 

They have a small fridge and stove, but no kitchen table or chairs. That first night they sit in the middle of the floor eating straight from containers of Chinese takeout from the restaurant down the street. This lead's to a problem Emma hadn't really foreseen. 

"Uh...can you cook?" she asks over a bite of noodles. 

"Sort of" Neal says slowly. But even that answer seems to be uncertain. 

And the truth itself seems to be more complicated than it should. Emma discovers the next morning when he goes down to the corner store and attempts to cook them both eggs. 

The smoke takes almost an hour to completely dissipate, and the landlady almost calls the fire department on them. 

Emma doesn't quite understand- Neal had seemed perfectly fine stirring the eggs and pouring them into the pan, but when it came to controlling the stove's heat it seemed as though he had never seen the appliance before!

Later she heats them up soup for dinner. They mostly stick to take out after that. 

The bed that came with the apartment is a double, with an aging mattress that's a little lumpy, but clean. It's more than twice the space they're used to sharing in the car, even when they push the front seats forward. 

And while Emma still sleeps curled on her back, Neal it turns out is fond on splaying out on his stomach, face first into the pillow. 

The third day, when Emma slips out early to go get breakfast, Neal awakens almost immediately, already used to the feel of her body beside him. After a moment's worry, he slides over into the middle of the bed to try to go back to sleep. 

He wakes up again when Emma returns with a box of pastries, snapping a picture of him face down into her pillows. 

"That's one for the book" she says, setting the camera aside, and climbing back into bed. 

She's still wearing the shorts and shirt she sleeps in, apparently having just slid her shoes on to walk to the store. 

Taking a bite out of her bear claw, she pulls out a piece of paper and a pen.

"What is that" Neal asks, leaning over her shoulder and grabbing a cheese danish out of the pink cardboard box. 

"The market down the street needs a cashier" she says, downcast. 

"Do you want to work there?" Neal asks cautiously. Emma's never really discussed what kind of work she would want to do. 

She bites her lip. "I was a waitress back in Maine. Always got stuck with the sucky shifts, and people are horrible to you. I hated it. But it's a job they'll give anyone, even someone with my record." 

"Wasn't that the job that you left after emptying the register and catching the bus out to Portland?" he does remember her talking about this vaguely when the topics of how they ended up on the road came up before. 

She laughs. "They have no proof I did that, so many of the other girls couldn't close the register right, the counts were always off, drove the manager nuts. There was barely enough there that night for my ticket, they could blame it on human error easy. Besides, that was over a year ago, right after I turned 17. I'm 18 now, that and the rest of the stuff will matter less and less as time goes by. I could even get them sealed away if I wanted to." She taps the pen after writing her full name in the space.

Neal blinks "So I guess it's just me who's going to have to get a new identity?" 

She looks at him, thinking. "Yeah...if you're going to get a job especially. Those wanted posters had your name and picture, date of birth, everything, use your social security number, and they'll all come right up". 

"I don't have a social security number" Neal admits "or a birth certificate, shot records, anything. The birthday and middle name on my ID are made up. I didn't take anything with me when I ran away. The guy at the jewelry store paid me under the table."

Emma has one of her hand's curled up in his hair. 

"You're a true man of mystery. Too bad you let them get your picture, otherwise you could always insist it wasn't you. If he didn't have records there would be no way to prove you were that Neal Cassidy." 

She tosses the paper and pen off onto the floor, and slides her hips over Neal's lap, pinning his shoulders to the bed.

"Forget getting a job. I'll just keep you as a house slave instead. What do you think? Spend your days cleaning and servicing me sexually" 

Taking his cue from her playfulness to stick with the change of subject, Neal grins wickedly, sliding the fingers of one hand under the waistband of her shorts 

Even through their mirth, a shadow has been cast over Neal's mind. Emma's plan for moving here and leaving their past's behind had seemed so easy. He didn't know how to admit that he really didn't know where to get a new identity. A new driver's license maybe, but there was so much more to a life in this world. Papers, documents, records of everything. And this isn't exactly the kind of thing that he could go down to the corner store and ask "hey anyone know where I can buy a new life, one crime free?". He'd have to do some digging. There was always someone around willing to buy anything he had, and people who weren't that choosey often knew others who were even less scrupulous.

Later in the week, he takes the day to explore his options. Emma's gone out in search of shoes to wear to her interview. She has a dress that she says should do, but that going in her tights and Doc Martens might send the wrong message.

"No one wants to see the real you in a job interview, they just want to see that you can kiss ass properly and answer their questions exactly the right way."

So, Neal's day follows the paths of the neighborhood's pawn shops, junk shops and vague questions given in the neighborhood dives. Disappointingly, it seems that Tallahassee is extremely upright. He truly doesn't really have much experience in seeking out others of the criminal persuasion. Marcus Weller, the kid who'd gotten him his fake driver's license, had just been one more of the lost and wayward teens at the group home. The six foot five, chain smoking Marcus had been surprisingly soft spoken for his mile long rap sheet. But he'd been a fountain of useful information and connections, ranging from where to get beer without getting carded, to how to slip out of handcuffs. Which may have been the reason that the last time Neal had seen him he'd been making a mad dash for the Canadian border. 

Though, while Neal could definitely use a Marcus Weller right now, the day's journey is not entirely unfruitful. By the time he gets home that evening, he has scrounged from various places; a folded up card table and chairs, a microwave with a few sauce stains, and a slightly broken, beat up dresser. 

None of them the best, but they'll all do. 

Emma shows back up right as he finishes dragging up the dresser into their bedroom and is emptying the last box of their stuff. She's muttering something about heels being torture devices designed by the patriarchy to keep women weak, but she's holding a bag, so Neal guesses she found what she was looking for. 

"Hey" he says, "Found a couple of things shopping today. There's just this box left stuff left from the trunk"

Emma tosses her bag on the counter, and grabs the box from him. 

Said box is their meager collection of personal possessions. Emma has a pile of tapes and CDs, and a couple of books (she favors true crime and thrillers). Neal's things take up less than 1/3 of the box. From looking at his things, one would think he had sprung up into the world a fully grown adult. 

He had some books of his own, more than Emma. She'd teased him to death when she'd found the box in the trunk. Fat, old books written more than fifty years ago. Books she'd only seen in libraries and schools. And she pretended to fall asleep whenever he tried to read to her from any of them, even though she secretly enjoyed it. Especially the one he'd   
said he'd been named for. 

He pulls out the dreamcatcher from that day in the motel.

"Can always use some flypaper for nightmares" Emma remarks and she takes it and hangs it in the kitchen window. 

Neal doesn't tell her that he hasn't had a single nightmare since they've moved in. 

The last thing in the box is a fluffy blob that Neal initially mistakes for a car towel until Emma snatches it away, turning slightly red. 

"What?"

Emma's clutching the blob, Neal can see now that it's a soft knitted blanket. 

"This is the blanket they found me in when I was a baby" she says, eyes gazing at the floor. 

"You kept it all these years?" Neal asks, quietly. He knows that Emma doesn't like talking about her past. She's hardly ever mentioned her parents, wherever they are now. 

She nods. "It's the only thing I have from my birth parents. I spent so many years wondering. They abandoned me, left me by the side of the road like a piece of trash. Didn't even take me to a hospital where I would be safe. No sign that they loved me at all. But they, or someone they knew, gave me this handmade blanket that has my freaking name sewn into it. It was the only thing that kept me going sometimes. Awful foster home to awful foster home. It was something, anything, that was meant for me alone, even if I didn't know why."

She's near tears now. Neal reaches out and takes her wrists. 

"Find a safe place for it. This place is our home, and all of you is part of it. Even the bad parts". 

Their faces are so close together that Emma can feel his breath. 

"I love you, know that right?"

A smile finally quirks its way back onto Emma's face. 

"You damn well better" 

The blanket lays, almost forgotten, on the table as the two embrace. Emma has a fleeting thought, of another small, wriggling, creature wrapped up in it, being held by her and the man currently running his lips down her neck. 

But it's a thought that she lets drift off, like an early morning dream.


	3. Feelin good was good enough for me

By the day her interview comes, Emma is so nervous that she actually throws up. Her throat still burns as she sits in the hard plastic chair outside of the store manager's office sweating through the nylon of her godforsaken pantyhose. She can't believe she's actually wearing hose. 

But she manages to smile prettily and maintain good eye contact, and answer all the middle aged pornstache'd manager's inane questions with perfectly bland responses. She is rewarded with a polyester blue vest, a cheap plastic name tag, and an order to start her training the next day at 8am. 

She doesn't understand why it makes her so proud. The first coworker she meets is a gumcracking sixteen year old with huge hoop earrings and her eyes constantly glued to her pager. But she is proud of herself, nonetheless. 

She celebrates by bring a plastic tray of cupcakes home from the store. Her employee discount is pretty sweet. 

Neal congratulates her by making her hot chocolate just the way she likes it. After eating the frosting off hers, Emma dunks the cake part into her chocolate. Crumbs swirl in the mug. 

"We're both going to get incredibly fat" Emma mumbles, mouth stuff full of cake. 

"After too long nearly starving I would love to get fat" Neal replies, reaching for another cupcake. 

"There's just one catch" Emma says, taking another swig of hot chocolate. "It's only part time. They said you have to have a high school diploma to be full time. As if it takes a ton of brains to scan barcodes and make change." 

"I thought you were done with school?" 

"I was studying to get my GED when they processed my emancipation. I never finished. They practically kicked me out when I turned seventeen. I guess they realized that if I had to stay much longer and I was just going to cut out and run away again." 

"I can help you study" 

Emma snorts, but really, Neal probably had read more books than she ever had. The boxes pulled from the car's trunk could attest to that. And he read the sort of things they made kids in school read, for fun at that! 

As long as the test doesn't involve how to turn on a stove, she'll do fine. 

"It'll be really nice not to be a drop out anymore too. People look at you like you've failed as a human being somehow if you tell them you dropped out of high school. Like a few more years of knowing about stupid hard math and old dead white men means anything". 

And that is the truth. 

She regrets the cupcakes later that night when her nerves get the best of her and she throws up again. She knows she really shouldn't be nervous. It's not as though she hasn't done job training or met new people before. 

Maybe it's because for once this all feels real. Like all those platitudes drawled by well meaning guidance counselors about the real world were actually coming true. A job. A chance to finally earn her GED. A home. Things that Emma spent so many years certain that she would never have. 

Training goes the next few days just as she expected. Computer lessons of rules and policies. Register training (nothing she hasn't already done), and criticism from supervisors on her "manner" with people. She should smile more they say. 

Her coworkers, at first blurred together, start to separate. The gumcracking teen becomes "Steffie", her portly mustachio'd manager "Terry". And the older woman who takes Emma under her wing at register 6, is "Judy". 

Judy's been working at "Antonio's Grocery" for 20 years. Her disdain for both customers and management is obvious. Emma loves her right off the bat. 

By the time she gets her first paycheck, Emma's wearing her blue vest, punching numbers and scanning barcodes like a pro. She's rehearsed her small talk and friendly smile to perfection. She know knows the store's layout, most of the produce codes, and the specials every week. 

The money isn't much, but it's nice to have some coming in. The watch money won't last them forever. 

Work is as good as it supposed to be. 

And Emma wishes she didn't hate every minute of it so much. 

She loathes every customer who complains about the lines. Every customer who lets their children run wild. Every stupid little inconsiderate thing that just proves to her that most people don't regard her as a person. 

The extreme couponers are the absolute worst though.

A soccer mom is giving her hell one Friday afternoon over a two for one yogurt when Emma finally bursts and lets out with "Ma'am if you're going to get this mad over 75 cents you could at least read the coupon before yelling at me, or is “not valid on other brands” too complicated for you?”

It's hugely satisfying, and it earns giggles from both Judy at the register behind her, and the pimple faced kid bagging her lane, but it puts Emma on eggshells. It's only been two months, she could be fired easily if word reached management. It's not like there aren't a million other places to work for minimum wage out there, but it's another black mark on her record, and one that would stick this time. 

And the market is so close to the apartment. Neal needs the car during the day to look for work. If there is one thing they could not afford, it would be a second car. Emma's already starting to eye her bank account balance with a nervous eye every time she pays the electric bill. 

So it's with her stomach uneasy and her mind racing that she returns home. But when she opens the front door she's hit with an unexpected, and unexpectedly wonderful aroma. 

"Good timing, the garlic bread's ready!" Neal exclaims while lifting a pan from the oven and setting it on the counter. Next to it is a pot of spaghetti, still steaming. 

"Did you know noodles are like a dollar for a whole box? And you only need a little to make a whole pot" 

Emma opens her mouth, but no sound comes out at first. When she finally regains the ability to speak, "..manage not to set the place on fire this time?" 

Neal takes the pot holders off and sets them on the counter. "Is that anyway to greet someone who just made you dinner after a long day?" he says with mock offense. 

He reaches out to embrace her before muttering "Still don't like the stove. Open flame's a lot easier to control". 

Emma laughs "yeah, I learned on a gas stove too. So what made you decide to become Mr Gourmet all of a sudden?" 

Neal rubs the back of his neck self consciously before reaching for a pair of plates. 

"It's just...with you at work all day, I've been feeling kind of useless. Thought I could do something productive, and cooking's a lot cheaper than eating take out all the time". 

The spaghetti is delicious, and the garlic bread equally so. 

"You didn't make this from scratch did you?" Emma asks, stuffing a bite into her mouth. 

"Nahh, but jarred sauce is good and ground beef is easy to brown. Went to the library and got some books of ideas to try, Thought I'd start easy." 

She snorts. "Only you would spend a day off at the library" 

"Some of us like to better ourselves through knowledge" he says, pointing the end of his fork at her accusingly. 

"Still no look with the job search?" she asks sympathetically. 

He drops the jovial attitude for a moment "Still nothing. Even the crummy fast food jobs want documentation. If this goes on much longer I'm going to end up looking for day labor gigs. There's got to be some around here. Lots of lawns..." 

Emma can tell he's getting a little embarrassed, so she doesn't push. She takes her last bite of spaghetti, and picks up the plates to wash in the sink. 

"But, I did give myself a job today" he adds, getting up and reaching onto one of the empty kitchen chairs. Emma pauses, suspicious of his mischievous tone. 

He pulls out a thick softcover book, emblazoned with a picture of a perkily dressed dark skinned girl with glasses holding a stack of notebooks and the title "Ace the GED". 

Emma lets out a groan. "Seriously?" 

"You said you wanted to do it, and I am going to help you." 

She rolls her eyes and whines her way through the exercise, but she is rue to admit, that it probably does help. Neal's a better teacher than she's ever had, far more patient. And if she wants to become full time at the market, she has to pass this test. If she wants that. 

She doesn't tell Neal about the encounter with the woman at the market. She's on edge for a week waiting for it come up, but it never does. 

The days start to fall into a comfortable rhythm. Emma takes on as many shifts as she can. The teenage cashiers are happy for a break, and she's happy for the cash. She bites her tongue and watches the clock and bides her time. 

Home is better. Home is a fucking haven. Even with Neal pushing the books at her and fretting whenever she brings up the topic of work. 

But despite the worries, even Neal seems happier than she's seen him before. The apartment is always clean when she gets home. His experiments with food are becoming more and more successful (except for the incident with the turkey helper). He has a brightness to his eyes that she's hardly seen, along with his wild grin. He's affectionate, and positive. He looks at her sometimes like she's hung the moon. It's almost too much for her sometimes. 

(One night following homemade tacos and him eating her out on the couch while watching TV, she's begun to understand how the patriarchy could have become so attached the housewife thing). 

She sets the date to take her GED, it's early on a Saturday and apparently takes three hours. If she passes, Terry says they have a full time spot opening up because one of the closing cashiers is moving home to Ohio after finishing school. She'll take it. One more step to permanence. One more thing that will steady this comfortable little existence they have. 

That little dark undercurrent is still there. The worries about money. The fear of mouthing off again and losing her job. And the inescapable fear in Emma's head that this is all too good to be true. That the next minute something is going to go wrong and he's going to leave. 

This darkness comes to ahead one night in May when Emma is cleaning her lane before clocking out and Suzy the college aged bag girl asks her to help with the basket of go backs. 

Suzy's a jaded smart ass of two years employment, so this ends up being them ripping on the stuff people would leave but still buy 

Emma really starts it up when she remembers the grizzled old jerk with the flag shorts who had tried to hit on every underage employee he could find 

"Who needs deodorant when it'll cut into your wine budget?" 

Suzy matches her with the soccer mom who had been actively lighting up in line despite their protests. 

"And these bags of salad could be two whole packs of cigarettes!" 

It's when she goes to put back a box of tampons that a light fires through Emma's mind. Suzy snaps her fingers by her head. 

"Hey, earth to Emma. Unless you want to be locked in tonight, we should go now" 

But she's transfixed, the pin in her mind has dropped at the sight of the neat display. 

Fuck. 

Fucking FUCK.


	4. Feelin good was easy Lord, when he sang to me

Emma's bent over the sink in the women's bathroom at the store, trying to spew her lunch as neatly as possible. The night crew has enough work as it is. There's a koala changing station right behind her in the mirror. It's mocking her. 

Sweat soaks her face, and her heart is thumping a million times a second. 

How could this have happened?

That's a stupid question. She's pretty damn sure she knows exactly how it happened. 

They were always so careful though! Well...they were sometimes so careful. Condoms weren't the easiest thing in the world to steal, but one of them could usually get their hands on some. 

And the times when they couldn't...well by the time either of them realized, neither would be keen on stopping. 

Good God, how could she have been so stupid?

She splashes some water on her face, dries it with a paper towel and steadies herself to leave. 

She leaves the bathroom to find Suzy still waiting outside, twirling a curl around her finger.

"Heard you barfing all the way out here, you pregnant or something?"

Hearing the word causes Emma's heart to catch in her throat. Her tongue fumbles around for a few moments before uttering;

"...I think I might be". 

Suzy shuts up at that, and Emma gets her bag and leaves for home without another word. 

When she gets home that night, Neal is sitting on the couch in front of the TV news with the yellow legal pad open on his lap and a mug of hot chocolate on the table. 

"Hey" she says, throwing down her bag on the kitchen table and moving to flop beside him. 

He has a pencil in his hand and is focused intently on the page. 

"What are you drawing?"

"Pirate ship" he replies.

"Planning on taking up a life of plundering now?" she says with a nudge to the shoulder. 

He does laugh "No, I just loved Treasure Island as a kid". He puts the pad aside on the couch before getting up and heading towards the kitchen.

"Want the leftover grilled cheese I made for dinner?"

"Sure"

He grabs the plate off the back of the stove and hands it to her before sitting back down.

"Good news!"

Emma pauses imperceptibly over her mouthful of grilled cheese. If only he knew. 

"I was in the basement doing the laundry today, and I was talking to the woman from 3B- her name's Susan Rodriguez by the way- and she asked if I could watch her two sons tomorrow night because she has to work late and her old babysitter had an emergency. I said yes, so when you get off tomorrow I'll be up there"

"That's cool" Emma says over a mouthful of sandwich, "I'll grab some deli stuff from work and meet you there for dinner. What's she paying you?"

"Seven bucks an hour"

Emma almost loses her bite. 

"She said that's what she paid the other girl"

"So let me get this straight...a job that they give twelve year old girls pays more than what I make? Why exactly did we not think of this before?"

"Cause no one wants a couple of homeless ex thieves to watch their kids" 

Neal's tone is joking, but it cuts Emma to the core. 

Because he's right. They're practically kids themselves. She works in a crummy service job and he's unemployed and neither of them graduated and they both have criminal records and it's not like she knows how to be a mother at all, how would she... 

She throws up later that night again. And for all that she tries to tell herself that it could be the nerves, in her bones, Emma knows. 

The truth is confirmed, the next day when she sequesters herself away in the bathroom, and stares at the little plastic stick as the two little pink lines that seal her fate appear. 

Her secrets must be all over her face, because when she comes back to the floor, Judy notices right away. 

"OK Emma, what's going on"

Judy really did have the penetrating mother's gaze down pat. 

She sucks up her breath before finally blurting out everything in a speil that she's sure is borderline incomprehensible. She's really very lucky that it's the middle of a weekday and there's no customers in her line. 

"Maybe it's OK" Emma said, reaching for straws even now "I mean, how accurate are those things anyway?

"Pretty damn accurate" Judy says with a cocked eyebrow. "Do you know what you're going to do?"

Emma's slumped over in her aisle, fiddling with a left behind WIC brochure. The woman on is has very straight teeth. "I don't even know Judy. I just don't know"

"Have you told your boyfriend about it yet?" 

Emma snorts. Neal had come by one day to bring her her lunch, and he'd immediately turned the charm on her coworkers. He really could when he wanted to. 

"I don't even know how I would start"

"'I'm pregnant' usually works pretty well" Judy says wryly. 

"It's just..I know he's had a life at least as hard as I have. Maybe even harder. But he's still got so many romantic ideals. He still thinks that things...that things could be perfect for us, no matter what gets thrown in our way."

She touches her stomach idly. There's someone growing in there, inside her. It still doesn't seem possible. 

"And when I'm with him, I feel like it too. But then you get me alone and the truth just rushes up on me. And I don't know if he'll be able to see that side of things". 

Emma's slumped back against her register, chin tucked protectively to her chest. 

"I don't even have a doctor" she says "Could I even afford one? Terry said I would get insurance when I get bumped to full time..."

"That won't start until next year at the earliest" Judy explains. She pulls a strip of register tape out and scribbles something down on it before handing it to Emma. "This is the number of a women's clinic across town. I went there when I got pregnant with my first. It's pretty understaffed, but they do what they can. Whatever you decide, they should be able to help". 

Emma takes the number, and she spends the rest of the day trying to wrap her head around what she should do. 

She gets home at 7, and realizes she'd forgotten the conversation with Neal the night before. She runs back to work to pick up the sandwich stuff, and doesn't get up to 3B until nearly 8.

The door is open, and she enters quietly to the noise of loud laughter and the world's fakest pirate voice.

"Argghh! Fail me again men and I'll make you all walk the plank!" is the first thing she hears, coming out of the mouth of a small boy no more than five, standing on the arm of a couch over both Neal and another older boy of maybe eight. Both boys had longish, floppy, dark hair and big smiles. The oldest "boy" had a smile almost to match right now.

Emma drops her bag and flops on the couch behind Neal. The apartment is laid out quite like their own, and furnished in much the same way. Clean, but cluttered, furniture, clearly secondhand. And family mementos covering. Photos, drawings, toys spread amok. 

"Real pirates never walked the plank, they tied you to the mast to scare away sea monsters, what kind of pirates are you supposed to be?"

The smaller boy puts his hands on his hips defiantly and insists. "We're not just pirates, we're pirate ninjas! And pirate ninjas make people walk the plank!"

Neal stands and plucks the boy up off the chair arm and puts him on the ground "Pirate ninjas that need to take a break for dinner now, this is my girlfriend Emma, and she brought us sandwiches. 

The little boy says "ewww" when Neal uses the word "girlfriend", the older one sticks his face in the shopping bag and wants to know if Emma brought bologna. 

She did. And the four of them sit at the kitchen table eating the sandwiches and a bowl of potato salad. Well, a bag of chips for Neal, who still stubbornly refuses to eat anything with mayonnaise. 

A fact that which the younger boy (Juan. His name is Juan, Emma tries to remember) finds of great personal offense. 

"But it's so goood. It makes everything yummy!" he insists over an overful mouthful. 

"Nu-uh" Noah (Noah the older, Emma notes) "You told mommy that once and poured it all over your bananas and oranges and then wouldn't eat them and she got mad". 

Emma giggles as the boys start to argue. Boys all three. 

It's like that pretty much the rest of the night. Neal's a natural, manages to get both of them bathed (and only has to threaten Juan with the hose once), dressed in their PJs, and off to bed with almost no problem at all.

They're both sitting on the couch (or slumping in Emma's case, who would have known little kids were so exhausting?) watching TV when Susan gets home from work. 

Susan's maybe twenty five, going on forty. Dark hair swept back off her neck and a name tag from the dry cleaner's at the strip mall a few blocks away. 

When she asks Neal to take the trash out to the dumpster downstairs, she takes the opportunity to ask Emma a few things. 

"I hate to ask you this, but do you think this could be a more regular thing? Charlotte called this morning and said she wouldn't be able to work the next two weeks either, and she's just a kid...It would only be a night or two a week, we're only open late Thursdays and Fridays to prepare for everyone needing everything nice for date night." She gets a look in her eyes that Emma knows too well. 

"I know some friends would say I was foolish leaving the kids with a man I'd barely met, but I was desperate and he did seem so friendly". 

Emma smiles wryly "You really didn't have any reason to worry, Neal's one of the best and most guileless men I've ever met- possibly the only one honestly. The worst you were probably going to be in for were some inappropriate pirate ninja stories and mayonnaise overdoses". 

There is relief on Susan's face, but still trepidation. 

"So you don't think it will be a problem..."

Emma lowers her voice a touch "Honestly, Neal's been having trouble finding any work at all, he'd probably jump at the chance. Neither of us finished high school, and" she pauses, and kind of kicks at the ground "Neal doesn't have any documentation. No SSN, no birth certificate, his driver's license is fake. I don't know the details but he left a really bad situation and doesn't have any ability to go back. We could really use the help, and if you knew any one who needed a babysitter or yard work, or anything else that they'd be willing to pay in cash..."

Susan gets a look of understanding on her face, and smiles. 

"I'll ask around". 

When they get home, and Emma makes her lunch for work the next day, Neal sits at the kitchen table, drawing again. 

“Susan asked if you'd be willing to watch the boys again next week, and maybe more regularly.” Emma says over her shoulder”. 

“Sure” he says “They're good kids. Barely any bloodshed at all, even when I had to make them come in when it got dark”. 

She sits beside him and looks over his shoulder, she sees him embellishing the pirate ship from the night before. Now it's under a huge full moon and sailed by four figures, two large, one with a long pony tail, and two tiny figures climbing the rigging. 

"Is that something you've thought about?" Emma asks hesitantly. "A family?" 

Neal sticks the pencil behind his ear and rubs the back of his neck. 

"I guess, I mean...my own family was never something to write home about...but I guess I thought I could find something like that again. A home, people who loved me."

She blurts out “Don't you ever get scared? Scared that everything we have, as little as it is, could just disappear over something stupid? That we could try so hard and still fail?”

He scoops her up into his lap, notepad on the table forgotten, pencil toppled to the floor. 

“Anywhere I've got you, that's good enough. Even if we end up selling matches in the street” 

“I don't think they do that anymore”. 

He doesn't even acknowledge her interruption. 

“Home is where you are for me.”

His voice is so certain, so sincere. Emma feels the back of her neck redden. No matter how many times she hears him say it, it still amazes her that he could actually want her. 

He strokes the side of her face with one finger. His voice has taken on a soft, serious tone. 

"A home, and at least one person who loves me,” His voice switches back to his usual easy going manner “So I'm already halfway there. Besides, as you saw today, kids love me"

She squirms against his squeezing arms, "You're going to have to get a new move, someday this one might not work."

He leans up and captures her earlobe between his lips. "Seems to be working fine now". 

His kiss is warm, and solid, and he feels so good underneath her that Emma lets herself drift away. 

But no matter how happy she feels right now, every time she looks at his face, all she can see is him leaving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I checked- the federal minimum wage in 2001 was $5.15, and I can't find anything saying Florida's was any higher, so that is most likely what Emma would be making per hour. Seven an hour is what one of my teenaged cousins charged for babysitting at the time.


	5. Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry bout the delay guys, but this chapter's a doozy so...

Two things happen the day before Emma is set to take her GED. 

One is wholly positive. 

The week before, Emma has casually asked Suzy during lunch if she knew where she could obtain a fake ID. 

"Planning on boozing it up once you pop mama?" The older girl asks slyly. 

"It's not for me" Emma says, annoyed. She really has a hard time grasping that Suzy's two years older than her. She doesn't have a care in the world and Emma feels like she's lived a thousand years. 

But Suzy indicates, that she does indeed, know. And with reassurance that her source is "the real deal", Emma gathers Neal's info on a card, along with a picture taken against the correct color backdrop that she could find and hang on the apartment wall. 

Which had led to a very odd conversation. 

He had insisted on altering the spelling of his name, and adding a middle name. 

"Yeah, I never thought "Cassady" looked right anyway" Emma said. "Want to change your birthday too?"

"Make it January 25, 1979"

"Feeling young today?"

He laughs "I didn't join the group home until I was fourteen. Stayed two years before bolting, it all kind of blurs together after that. Seasons aren't even really a thing in most of California."

"Or here for that matter" Emma had adjusted to the heat, but the Florida humidity was going to kill her. "I'm not used to having to fake younger. The rule was always..."

"21 or bust" Neal knew that rule well. Eighteen was well and good for not getting caught and tossed back in the system, but twenty one meant there was almost nothing you couldn't do. Except for renting a car, which neither of them could have ever afforded anyway. 

Emma feels a stab of sympathy. He'd been on his own, really on his own, so much longer than her. 

"I can't believe you can't remember your own birthday."

"I know it was in winter. It was always cold and snowy, we always had to build a big fire. I don't think it was close to Christmas. But I haven't celebrated at all since before I was ten. Either we had no way to or no one cared to". 

And again, she doesn't push it. 

She really should someday. 

And after adding his height, weight, hair and eye color, Emma has the information sheet ready to give Suzy. 

It only takes Suzy a week to get it to her. It's a good one too, Emma can tell. Correct hologram, no bleeding ink, and she was careful to provide a properly awful picture. No one's going to look twice at it.

At the end of the night, she gives it to him and he's ecstatic. He says that while she's taking her test tomorrow he'll have to drive back over and get a real library card. 

He is the only man in the world who has to use a fake ID for that. 

The other thing that happens is she slips out of work early to finally head to the doctor that Judy had recommended. 

The clinic is tiny, with yellowing walls. The only other people in the waiting room are the bored looking receptionist, currently doing her nails, a nervous looking teenage couple who couldn't have been more than fifteen, and a woman well into her thirties with a cigarette in one rhinestone studded hand and the other pushing the handle of a double stroller. 

Despite this, it still takes nearly an hour before the harried looking nurse calls her name. It seems like another eternity from when she's measured and poked and made to pee in a cup and put on an embarrassingly tiny gown to when the doctor actually shows up. 

The doctor is younger than she expected, but still with the aura of jadedness about him. 

She answers all his questions again, even the ones the nurse had already asked. 

"Date of your last menstrual period?"

"I don't know, it was sometime after Christmas". 

"Are you usually regular?"

"No, and I never have been" That she had been grateful for. Dealing with it in such cramped quarters with only intermittent access to bathrooms and showers had been her idea of true hell. 

"Do you smoke? Do any other drugs"

"No"

"Do you drink?"

"Not often"

"Sexual partners?"

"Just the one" 

He checks off the boxes on his sheet and then leaves again. Emma barely has time to get redressed before he comes back, the words come out his mouth as "You're definitely pregnant" before rolling into a list of instructions.

Emma barely hears the instructions though.

Three little words and that was it, her life was going to be permanently changed. 

The doctor must have noticed her head-in-the-clouds face because he looks up from the paper. 

"If you're interested in learning about options for termination, I'll have to get another set of paperwork..."

Emma's insides seize up inside of her and she barely manages to sputter out "No, no I'm not considering that."

The doctor nods "Glad to hear that, you're honestly better shape that many of my patients". 

Emma snorts, glancing down at herself in her worn work clothes and shabby shoes. "You're other patients must be hopeless cases then". 

"The last young woman I examined is having her third child, and she's barely seventeen years old. She dropped out a year ago and hasn't kept a job in months. Her parents kicked her out so she's living with friends. Trust me, you're much better off". 

Emma opens her mouth, but no words come out. There's really nothing to say. 

The doctor tears a slip of paper, adding it to the stack of instructions. 

"This is a prescription for prenatal vitamins, Take them, and follow all the instructions the best you can. If any problems come up, come back in or call 911. You're far enough along to get your first ultrasound done today, but the tech's off" he laughs bitterly "as you can probably tell we don't get much funding. I can schedule you for one next week, if Friday works for you again"

Emma thinks for a moment, and says "yes, that should be okay". 

"Good. You should bring your partner with you, this is a pretty big milestone for a first pregnancy". 

She nods tersely. 

The doctor hands her the stack of papers, and as she stands up, reaches to shake her hand. 

"Take care of yourself kid". 

Emma takes the papers and ducks out as fast as she can. She gets one last glance at the doctor before she leaves, and is again struck by how old and worn he looks. Her gaze turns instead to the tiny, yellowed walls and the noises from the waiting room and she guesses she understands. 

She fills the vitamin prescription on her way home, and steadies herself to lie, for a while more at least. The pill bottle is fairly large, so she slips it into the glove compartment, figuring she can keep it in her locker at work until she finds a safe spot at home. 

***

She goes through the motions that evening, eating dinner, studying for her exam tomorrow, trying to pretend that her entire world hasn't just been turned upside down.

It's dark outside, and they're both cuddled on the couch, Neal with her practice book open in front of him, idly playing with her hair. 

"The balance in Tisha’s checkbook was $1219.17. Since then she has deposited her latest paycheck of $2425.66 and written checks for $850.00 (rent), $235.89 (car payment), and $418.37 (credit card payment).

What is the current balance in Tisha’s checking account?"

"Can I work where she does?"

"Not an available answer"

She grabs the legal pad off the arm of the sofa and write a couple things down. Math she can do. Math requires no value judgments, so hidden agendas.

"$2,140.57"

"Correct!" Neal exclaims dramatically, rewarding her with the tip of his tongue teasing her earlobe. 

She lets herself enjoy it, if only as a way to distract herself. 

"Did you ever think of going for it yourself?" she asks. 

"Becoming an accountant?" 

She smacks the top of his head. Smart ass. The kid better not inherit that. Shit, she can't be thinking that way already can she?

"Taking the test yourself"

He goes quiet. And Emma's known Neal long enough to know that quiet, serious Neal is probably thinking things that they're both trying to avoid talking about. 

Finally, "could we afford it?" comes out of his mouth. 

He has a point. The tests, all subjects, had cost her almost four day's wages to sign up for. They had been optimistic of their wiggle room then. Now Emma knows otherwise, and she guesses Neal has realized the same that she has. 

"Hey" she says softly, nudging him with her shoulder. "We can save up. You have as much right for people to know you're smart as I do. You've helped me study so much it shouldn't be hard for you at all."

Emma leans over and presses her lips to the sensitive spot under his ear. 

"We could both practice some hands on biology now". 

Neal tosses the test book on the floor unceremoniously just in time for Emma to knock him on his back and pin his shoulders to the couch. 

They can't keep doing this forever, Emma thinks, as her hands gleefully peel off his shirt, they have to actually talk about it. There are things that clearly scare them both, and they keep finding ways to avoid it. 

But tonight is not the night that that will change. 

***

The next morning is hot as ever, and the sky is full of clouds as Neal drives her to the testing center. It's at an adult school, a tiny building at the end of a suburban development across the street from a park with a set of hiking trails. 

Neal leaves Emma at the front, with her bag, ID and their utility bill for proof of residency, and says he might explore the park a little but he'll be back in an hour or two, well before she should be done. 

And then, Emma is alone. 

The whole center is cold, air conditioner cold, and she regrets the thin top she picked that morning, expecting the relentless heat the had been suffering through. The woman who takes her info is bored looking, with short coppery curls and an open romance novel on her lap. 

Before Emma knows it, she's sitting in a room with another similarly bored proctor in the front, and a pasty boy a year or two younger than her who looks decidedly more high strung about the situation than her. The desk she's sitting at must be from an elementary school because the cold metal bottom is pressing into her thighs. The proctor hands out the first section of the test, and Emma takes a deep breath, picks up the provided number two pencil and starts.

English is first, the science and history, before finishing with math. Emma's glad for it, because by the last section her brain is mush and with math there's no tricky emotional wiggle room, she just needs to double check that she's writing things down correctly. 

Math doesn't leave much room for her to ruin things by thinking about them.

And when the sun is just beginning to get high enough to shine through the tiny window, the proctor tells them to put down their pencils and hand in their papers. 

Neal's sitting outside drawing when she finally steps out. The clouds have broken, and the sun has yet to start boiling the world alive. 

"Are you done?" He asks, seemingly as nervous as she. 

"Twenty minutes for the results" she replies. 

They both lean against the car doors, Emma pretending to look at Neal's drawings, but too damn nervous to really look. 

If she fails, it will be months before she could save enough to take them again without guilt. By that time the baby may have already come. 

When the proctor comes out to get her and gives her her sheet of results, she can hardly breathe. 

English 165  
Social Studies 154  
Science 168  
Math 174

Emma clamps her hand over her mouth to muffle her yelp of surprise. All passing scores, math passing with honors. She spins around and hugs Neal tight, to the amusement of the proctor. 

"Your diploma and paperwork will be mailed within a few weeks and if you need proof of score before then, have whoever it is call the testing center and give them your info". 

She's still on cloud nine when they get back to the car. 

"There's a Waffle House a few blocks from here, want to get lunch then I can drop you off and go to the library?"

She nods, then bounces her way into the front seat. 

Neal's proud. More proud than he really should be over an eighteen year old being able to prove that she has the same amount of knowledge as pretty much every other eighteen year in the country. But he did teach her a lot, and she supposes he has a right to be proud of that. 

He doesn't even make fun of her for paying the fifty extra cents to get both strawberries AND peanut butter on her waffle.

"It's like a PB&J but in waffle form!" Emma insists, scarfing down another bite. 

When they leave, Emma asks a question.

"Does the library you go to have internet access?"

"Yeah, but you need a card to login". 

"Can I come with you today? There's some stuff I want to look up" Emma is as surprised as he to hear the words coming from her mouth.

Neal cocks an eyebrow "GED make you want to turn your life to academic pursuits and leave this all behind?"

"There's some stuff I want to look up."

He takes another bite out of his cheeseburger, and says "Sure, but I've been known to take a while there". 

"That's fine, there's gotta be something to do there."

When they're driving back across town, Emma begins to wonder maybe if she's crossing a line. That maybe Neal considers the library HIS place, and that she's intruding. 

The library is a small, beige painted building a block away from a Burger King. It's surrounded by a surprising number of trees and across the street from a depressing back of an industrial park. 

Inside it's surprisingly warm and homey. Low lighting, lots of squishy chairs. 

And Neal is in his element it seems. He's all charming smiles today. The librarian at the desk, a young woman with dark hair, greets him warmly. 

Emma might be a touch jealous until he introduces her and the woman follows with "Ah, we've heard so much about you". Her name tag reads Diane.

She stands and looks around her as Neal fills out the paperwork. The floor is small, with a few scattered tables among the bookshelves that are on every usable section of floor, which is itself flattened and faded. There aren't any windows, but the lighting is soft. It's inviting, like Emma originally thought, but definitely has the look of a staff who have to make do a lot. 

Neal nudges her. He needs the utility bill in her purse for proof of address.

When Diane finishes entering the blank card's number into her computer and hands it to Neal, Emma asks her where the public computers were. 

"Oh, they're in the hallway by the door that opens to the children's library, bring that with you I'll show you how to log on". 

And so Neal goes about his business being bookwormy, and Emma sits down at a terminal that even she can tell is outdated. But the internet powers up just like she remembers it did at school, and soon she's searching for the things that she needs. 

She doesn't want to have to come back for anything, so she copies and prints out more than she probably needs. Swathing the stack into her bag, she goes to find Neal. 

"Are you done?" she asks when she finds him in a stack. 

"Not even close" he replies, not even looking up. 

Emma wanders the stacks herself, trying to find something to entertain herself. They're eight feet tall easy, and between the stacks and the lack of windows, Emma's beginning to feel trapped. It's so quiet too. Emma's heard all the "be quiet, this is a library!" jokes before, but it feels unnatural to her. The whole room feels far too small. 

She hits up the mystery section, finding a series she's read before and picking up one she hadn't yet. She laughs at the back cover. It even takes place in Florida. 

She can't stay in this area, it's too much for her. And so, with a glance at Neal back in science fiction, she leaves and tries to find a place across the hall in the children's library. 

The difference between the two really was almost like night and day. Almost literally, the big, sunny room is decorated with murals of the sky, from dawn to twilight. While the adult section had no windows at all, this room has a floor to ceiling glass sliding door leading out to a small deck with chairs. 

The noise level is different too. Whereas the other side had been lifelessly quiet, this one was full of life. Kids jabbering to their parents, to other kids, a young woman in one corner reading aloud to a group. 

There's a little girl at one small table sitting with a book with a cauldron on the cover. She can't be more than eight, the book is so big that she can barely hold it up. But she's transfixed, her eyes never moving from the page. 

When her mother comes to get her, she clutches the book to her chest, seemingly afraid that someone might take it. Emma's chest tightens. Any child of Neal's would probably love books as much as he did, she can just seem him taking him here on Saturday afternoons and coming out with huge stacks..

Stop thinking that way Emma, she tells herself. Stop getting ahead of yourself. 

There's a group of the same comfortable chairs on the side, presumably for tired parents. Emma takes up a space in one of them and opens her book. 

She's actually a decent way through it when Neal finally comes to find her. 

"Finally, I was about to fall asleep in this chair". 

"They are great for napping", Neal remarks, "Hang on, before we leave I want to show you something".   
He leads her out into the hallway, and down to the end. By the door leading to the bathrooms, there is a large bulletin board on the wall, covered in fliers. 

Emma stares. There's everything. Community events, library events, stuff for sale. And a handful of fliers of people looking for workers to do odd jobs. Babysitting, lawn work, help with building. 

Neal tears off a phone number strip off one. 

"This is why I come here so many times a week. I've gotten something like four jobs from these already. I wanted to post something advertising my services, but I couldn't print it out without a library card". 

"OK, you win, being a book geek does have it's good points" Emma teases as they walk to the front desk to checkout.

Emma doesn't tell Neal about what she'd been looking up, and to his credit, he doesn't ask. But that week she made more phone calls than she ever had in her life. She was on hold innumerable times. She begged Barb, the HR manager, to let her sneak in the office and use the fax machine during her lunch hour. 

But it's worth it when she hears the overworked woman on the other end tell her that all her documents are in order, and that all she can do is wait and see how it goes. 

She would probably be nervous, but there's so much else going on that she hardly has time. 

The summer barbecue season is in the upswing, and the lines at work are ridiculous. Emma comes home every night exhausted, with her feet and back killing her and barely the energy to eat, shower and sleep. Neal's managed to wrangle two jobs doing yard work that week, and he's not home either day when she gets home. She's in bed, mostly asleep by the time the sun has set and he gets back, takes off his shoes and curls up behind her, arm thrown lazily over her middle, seemingly not noticing the subtle swell of her belly. 

And that too. 

***

The ultrasound is on Friday afternoon. She tells Neal she's going to try to hunt down a new fan since it's been so hot, and takes the car to drive to the clinic again. 

There's a longer wait this time. Long enough for the baby faced ultrasound tech to look haggard by the time she gets to him.

"This will feel a little cold" he tells her before squirting the clear blue gel on her bared stomach, that at almost four months, she thought would be bigger. 

The swirling black and white image on the screen means nothing to her, even when the tech tries to point the parts out to her. He tells her it's a boy. It doesn't really mean much to her, but then he puts the Doppler on too, and she hears his heartbeat for the first time.

She tucks the print out into her purse, and knows what she has to do.

***

When she gets back to the apartment, it's just started to cool off. Neal's occupying his usual hot summer day place- flat on his back on the kitchen floor with a book open in front of him. 

"Hey" he says, not really looking up, "Tried to turn on the stove to cook dinner, nearly died. Want to just go get burgers instead?"

"Sure, that sounds great". 

It's a top down night, and the Sonics is crowded. When they finally get their food, Emma catches a sight out of the corner of her eye. The next car over is a teenage couple who barely look old enough to drive. They're not quite making out, but doing that excessive-touching-stupid-gazing thing that still held the power to make other people in the area uncomfortable. There's a little boy in the backseat, the girl's brother from their shared dark hair and skin, and just when the girl finally leans over to plant one on her boyfriend, he leans up and tugs on one of her braids. 

It makes Emma's heart ache. 

When Neal reaches into the bag to hand her hers, she reaches out and touches his hand. 

"Hey... do we have to go home just yet? Can we just drive around for a while like we used to?"

Neal looks at her like he sees the something behind her eyes, but holds out his fist for their old ritual.

Rock, paper, scissors, for who drives (he wins). 

Flip a coin for who picks the music (she wins). 

The alt rock on the radio doesn't seem to suit the evening. It's beautiful out, clouds tinted pinky orange against the darkening blue sky. It's warm enough to have both the windows rolled all the way down. The swamp jasmine, that floral scent Emma remembers from the first night, is strong in the humidity, mixed with the occasional barbecue smoke. 

"I miss this" Emma admits, feet up on the dashboard, head lolling out the window a little. 

"This place was our home for so long", Neal replies, "did we ever get the Coke out of the floor mats?"

"I'll hose them off in the sink tomorrow, or we'll probably get some exotic Florida bugs in here". 

"It's a good thing we didn't go too far south. If we lived in the backseat here we'd probably die. Die or melt".

There's really not all that much to look at. Houses, apartments, strip malls, gas stations. They pass the public pool, it's all lit up. SUVs parked in their drive ways next to perfectly manicured lawns. 

"Kerouac wrote about this in the book I took my name from. About the freedom of the open road, only stopping when you wanted to, making you're own expectations. It's a lot less romantic when you've lived it."

Emma lifts her head to look at him, his face is once again inscrutable. 

"One of these days I'm going to catch you off guard, and you're going to finally tell me your real name". 

He shakes his head. 

"It doesn't matter now. I'm Neal, and that's who I'm always going to be."

The stars are out now, even though there's still a touch of brightness to the blue sky. They've reached the edge of a park area with a small lake. 

When the moon comes out, they're parked and have both stretched out on the hood. There's light from across the late, a late summer campfire. The moon is three quarters full, and shining off the surface of the water. 

Neal points to one bright star in the distance, "That's the north star. Sailors used to say that if you just followed it you would always end up home".

"What if you didn't live north?"

"Well clearly all the sailors who said that did."

Emma watches him go on about the other stars and constellations, rolled onto her side, hand supporting the side of her face. 

He's just said something about Orion's belt when the words "I'm pregnant" tumble out of her lips, softly, and without her permission. 

But apparently loudly enough that Neal's head snaps to the side to stare at her, colliding inelegantly with the metal of the car hood. 

For a moment all that comes out of Neal's mouth is "Ummmm" but then he manages "with a baby?"

Emma rolls her eyes so hard her head follows them

"No with a dolphin". 

The next is more "ummms" followed up with a "wow". 

"OK, I'm glad no one's ever called you the articulate one in this relationship!"

There's some more wordless movements of his face before it stills. The next thing he says comes out almost as traitorously as hers.

"Where are we going to put it?"

"I don't know, we'll get a crib and keep in the living room I guess? And it's not an it, it's a he."

Neal's face softens immediately. "You already know?"

Emma reaches down into her open window to pull up her purse. The sonogram image is folded right on top. 

"I got this done today. It's a boy. I'm due in early December."

Neal stares at the image for a moment. Then he rolls over, landing square on top of her to squash her into a full bodied hug. 

She yelps, and he jumps back.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry, I didn't hurt you two did I?"

She starts laughing, "We're fine, the doctor says short of falling down stairs my body's actually very baby safe right now."

Her face freezes.

"Baby safe..."

Neal gets it immediately. 

"All of our outlets are exposed!"

"The tub floor is super slippery"

"What if he gets into the bottles of paint thinner"

"We don't have any paint thinner"

"Yeah but we might"

Emma sits up and hugs her knees. 

Neal asks, finally, "why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I don't know...I guess I told myself it couldn't be true at first...then I was scared that you would be mad. Then I thought maybe you'd be so happy you wouldn't see straight and would be all rainbows and sunshine everything-will-be-perfect-and-easy from now on and I didn't think I would be able to think straight myself..."

"Are you kidding? Babies are soft and helpless and easy to break. And when they get older there's a million ways you can fuck them up."

Emma tucks her head "I haven't even though about him getting older. I'm still stuck on the whole I'm going to have a kid this time next year thing."

Emma slides her shirt up, and runs her hand over her just barely enlarged stomach.

Neal sits up next to her, and wraps an arm around her. 

"I am you know? Happy." he studies her carefully, his hand gently joining hers. Her skin burns at the contact. "Are you? Happy about it? Because if you're not...if this is something we need to talk about..."

"No" Emma's snaps immediately, then continues softer. "God knows we have our problems, but this kid...he's ours. He's barely the size of a lemon right now, but he's still ours."

She stares Neal straight in the eye. "He deserves a home and a family who loves him. We may not have much but we have to try. We have to give him his best chance."

Neal nestles his face into the crook of his neck. "Damn straight he does."

They stay there like that for a while, just staring up at the stars. 

"I really hope we don't break him the first day though".

****

Emma tapes the sonogram to the front of Neal's notepad then they get home that night. All the dreams they have now are bound up in him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Emma's reading is Dennis Lehane's Sacred- the third in a series of neo noir detective novels set in Boston, and are exactly the kind of gritty, dirty, morally gray and emotionally trying stories I think Emma would enjoy on the occasion she reads. Gone Baby Gone is the next in the series, it was out in 2001, but I really doubt she'd take it all that well.


	6. Through all kinds of weather

"You ready for this?"

"God no"

"You're in good company, here hold my hand". 

Emma brings Neal to her next appointment. And tries not to laugh too hard at him when he passes out seeing the ultrasound image.

***

It's nearly four weeks before Emma gets the documents in the mail. It only took about twelve hundred phone calls, a million faxes, and far more soft voiced pleading than she's comfortable with. 

But it comes in the mail, a big fat envelope with an official seal from the state of Maine and everything. 

When she reads the papers she lets out such a horrible, squealy yell that Neal looks at her like she's gone insane. 

"Em, are you OK?"

She clutches the papers in front of her, bouncing on the couch beside him. 

"I'm clean."

"Clean? As in..." Neal asks, even though his eyes tell her he gets it. 

"My entire juvenile record, sealed tight, like it never happened. The lady at the courthouse even said they sometimes destroy old sealed records after five years."

She pets the top of her belly. "You hear that kid? You're no longer the child of a common criminal. No more theft, no more assault, no more drunk and disorderly, no more malicious destruction of property"

"Malicious? What did the property ever do to you?"

She smacks him with the envelope. 

"First guy I ever made out with at a party when I was fourteen. I really liked him, then he laughed in my face when I tried to talk to him in front of his friends the next day. So I slashed his tires in the parking lot. God I can't even remember his name..."

"How'd you get caught?"

"One of his friends saw me leaving with a knife. The little red folding knife I keep in my boot? I probably wouldn't have gotten in trouble if I hadn't have kept it on me. But our school was pretty strict about the no weapons thing, so they called the police and I got arrested. It was my first."

"Sounds better than mine. I just got picked up for vagrancy. Cops were nice until they realized I couldn't tell them where I lived. So I got tossed in with all the other guys coming out of juvie in the group home."

Emma rests her head on his shoulder. She'd lied through her teeth. Bobby Henderson, she remembered his name, and his laugh, in perfect detail. Slashing his tires had been an impulsive decision. All she could hear was his mocking laugh, the laugh that she had used to love, and it enraged her. She'd allowed herself to be vulnerable, to act like any other teenage girl at a party, slightly drunk and happy, and it had just found a way to come back around and bite her. To humiliate her. To make that powerful happiness seem like a frivolous sin.

It had been that day that she had refused to ever let another man have that kind of power over her. 

She'd mostly succeeded.

It's a good thing she has the happy moments to cling to, because work is starting to put Emma down so hard she wonders if she'll ever get up.

The summer barbecue season apparently means full time cashiers working twelve hour shifts every weekend. By the middle of July, Emma's already showing significantly. The long hours are murder. She's never been more tired, achy, sweat and uncomfortable in her life. The kid is playing kickball with her bladder, and the constant need for bathroom breaks are not met with kindness from either customers or management. 

She's so exhausted one night that she falls asleep on the bench by her locker, only to be awoken two hours later by Judy and Neal who practically have to lift her to get her to stand and walk. 

She almost cries on the way home because she has no idea how she could handle this all if it weren't for Neal.

Even on her days off, it's the dog days of summer in Florida. Sweltering heat and unending humidity. The windows are open 24/7 with only the thin patched screens protecting them from the biting, stinging insects. 

And since Emma has truly, popped, she also has to face up to an unpleasant truth. Most of her clothes don't fit, and maternity clothes are expensive and mostly not suited to the Florida climate, or to her. She found a pair of jean shorts that someone had cut and sewed the waist of a pair of sweatpants into in a thrift store that are comfortable, even if she finds them horribly embarrassing to wear. 

A couple of her looser dresses do still fit, but she hasn't been able to wear her jackets or boots or tights for months. She feels naked, vulnerable, with so much skin exposed to the world, and she's already got a face full of freckles and a couple of epic sunburns to show for it. 

(she unzips her work pants and wears them low with her extra baggy shirt covering the waist and a string binding her belt loops so they won't slip. No one to impress there.)

It's gotten to the point that the only comfortable spot in the apartment is the tiled kitchen floor. One day, Neal has finally had it and moves the kitchen table by the coffee table so they could have more room. 

This is also complicated by one side effect of pregnancy that Emma had never really heard about. 

She's horny as fuck. Almost all the time. 

Neal learned not to stand too close to the stove after the first time she got home and tackled him straight to the floor, nearly dragging the pan of frying eggs off the stove. 

It's as though she's an addict, she can't seem to get enough of him. His skin, his scent, his touch. Every little taste leaves her wanting more. 

It's come with complications, heavy expanding stomach shaped complications, but they find ways around it. 

Emma pants and shuts her eyes as she comes down. The side of her face is pressed against the floor. She reaches out one hand and touches the cool tile. 

"I really love this floor".

Neal chuckles from behind her as he pulls out and lets his hand drop her thigh. He pulls up her ponytail and lays a soft kiss on the back of her neck that makes her shiver. 

"All the times in my life that I've bemoaned sleeping on the ground and I fall for the girl who likes it". 

Emma rolls onto her back and slips one of her hands into his hair. 

"This floor's way better than the ground. And think of all the other stuff you didn't have then. TV, somewhere to sleep at night, regular showers. I think a girlfriend who likes having sex on the floor is a fair trade off".

Neal slips down her body, pressing a kiss to the nest of curls surrounding her vulva, and smiling at her in that way that both terrifies her and warms her from head to toe. 

"More than fair? I'd say I made out like a bandit."

Emma shakes her head, she still can't believe that Neal acts like he's the lucky one.

Then he slithers his tongue through her still wet and swollen folds and Emma stops thinking at all.

**************

The next clinic visit is a whirl of tests and warnings and everything that could go wrong. 

Blood and needles and another ultrasound. Words that neither Neal or Emma understand. 

And Neal knows that if the huge needles and big words are scaring him, that it must be so much worse for Emma. She may know more about this world's medicine, but she's the one its actually happening to. 

It ends with a list of "oks" from most of the tests, and a lecture for Emma to take it easy at work because her blood pressure is a little high, and a reminder that she needs to eat more because the baby needs the extra nutrition. 

The doctor barely speaks to Neal at all. He gets the sense, and Emma confirms on the way home, that the staff doesn't get many couples that come in together. 

"It's really the kind of place where you go when you can't go anywhere better. You can't afford it or you're scared or you don't want anyone to know. That's why they don't have many people working or anything that's new because nobody thinks the women who come here are worth it." 

It's probably the truth, but Neal wishes it didn't make him feel even more helpless than before. It's bad enough seeing how hard Emma works, when he can only earn them any money sporadically. 

The shopping trips they've gone on have only made it worse. There's so many things to buy for babies and they all seem to cost so much. He doesn't remember anything like it back home even though everyone there had far less money. Women in his village usually relied on relatives or other women in the area for most of the supplies, and they had far fewer of them. 

They have good luck with the second hand stores. Lots of baby clothes that look like they were worn once or twice. A mobile with a moon and stars that looked as though it were made by hand. There's a little mobile crib that would fit perfectly in the corner of their bedroom until the baby got bigger. It's brand new. Neal doesn't want to think about why it would have ended up in a thrift store in that condition. The doctor's visits had been scary enough.

Emma insisted they buy the car seat new though, and make sure it's a good one, so he knows that she thinks about those kind of things too. 

"One of the babies in the same home as me when I was seven or so had been in a car accident riding on her mom's lap. She hit the windshield and nearly died. She was hurt so badly that her parents abandoned her and she was basically passed around to any home that would take her because she was so sick. Tubes everywhere, she couldn't eat or breathe on her own. I think they eventually sent her to a hospital to live with other kids like her, instead of an actual home. That won't happen to my kid if I have anything to do with it. I couldn't take it."

There's a rage in Emma's words that Neal's never heard before. 

"Who would do something like that? Leave a kid so helpless and suffering to complete strangers?"

Emma hoists her side of the car seat's box into the trunk and grunts, before responding, brusquely. 

"Someone who probably should have never been allowed to have kids at all". 

Neal agrees. And he reads every book on infant health and safety the library has. He goes around the apartment, inventing substitutes for the usual baby proofing. Duct tape covers the outlets neatly. Little sticky pads from the hardware store hold the cabinets shut. 

Even though he still wonders if the child's biggest danger will be from it's own father. Father. Neal had never truly thought he would have children. He figured himself for a life of wandering and surviving, never belonging. He hasn't thought of his own father for more than a fleeting moment or two in years. 

Because looking at Emma, and the ultrasound pictures he keeps around almost all the time, he thinks he might understand him a little. Even at his most wretched, Rumpelstiltskin had always been about protecting him. And Neal feels that he would do absolutely anything to keep Emma and their child safe from anything any world could throw at them. 

***

But despite the fear, and uncertainty, there are happy moments between. 

In late August, during one evening that the heat has relented enough that lying on the couch isn't torture, they're stretched out watching a movie. 

"I can't believe you've never seen an Indiana Jones movie". Emma says, flat on her back with her head tilted away from him. "They were practically required viewing when I was growing up. Also that tickles". 

Neal had grabbed a felt tipped pen and started doodling on her skin. She was a great canvas. He was currently trying to add vines and details to her flower tattoo, which unfortunately for her is located on very sensitive skin. He presses the pen down harder. 

"You never told me how you got this."

She laughs. "My foster sister Gina had a boyfriend who wanted to be a tattoo artist, and he did it at a party. He pierced my ears too. I'm lucky I didn't get Hepatitis or something from it. I actually wanted a rose, but he ah... wasn't really the greatest artist." 

Neal finishes shading lines into the last petal. "Well I can't make it into a rose, but I can make it into something." 

They watch the movie mostly quietly. It is pretty good, even if Neal doesn't quite understand the historical stuff. 

He asks a little later, "have you thought about what we should name him?"

Emma shifts a bit before answering. "Little bit. Nothing really seems right."

A few minutes later, regarding the movie. "Henry's a good name, we could name him that". 

Neal laughs. "Sure he just won't take the dog's name instead?" 

"Well we'd have to have a dog first". 

"True...so Henry? At least if we don't think of anything else?"

"Yeah."

Neal drops the pen and reaches to rub Emma's stomach. Henry. 

***

Neal never tells Emma about the postcards. 

The first one had come scarcely a week after they'd moved in. A plain photograph of Kansas, all written on the other side was the singular word, "destiny". He'd thrown it away immediately. 

Maybe a half dozen more in the later months. Neal throws them away mostly without looking, but sometimes he can't help it. 

The latest one is a sepia toned photo of a family by a car during the Great Depression, all their worldly possessions in bags. The bright blue "Oklahoma" does nothing to cheer. The words on the other side,

"Do you really think this is what she wants?"

Rather than throw this one away, Neal carefully tears it up and puts it in a ceramic bowl. Then he lights a match and watches the pieces smolder. 

***

The seasons finally turn a bit, though it's still warmer than Emma would have ever expected for October. 

It's just a regular day when it happens.

"Do you want first or second lunch?" Judy asks before closing her lane.

"You go ahead, I'm not really hungry". Emma replies. It's true, her stomach's been hurting most of the morning. 

When Judy leaves the area, Emma feels the first twinge. 

By the time she returns, Emma's slumped against register, sweating. The pain is worse. 

"Emma?"

When Judy reaches for her arm and Emma tries to move a step, she doubles over. 

Something is wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm like 99% sure that sealing a juvenile record is not this easy, but info from google was pretty scarce so I hedged what I could. 
> 
> Next chapter is going to be pretty traumatic for me to write, so it might take a while longer, but it'll come eventually. I'm not planning on ending this particular story anytime soon. Like, I actually plan on it's sequel becoming a "for want of a nail" retelling of the show that will let me air some of my grievances with it. Totally self indulgent, but it makes me happy.


	7. Through Everything We'd done

Of course, Neal's working today. 

Of course, Emma can't remember where. 

Of course, she has to give Judy her key and beg her to go back to the apartment and find where he has the address written down and try to find him and tell him.

Of course this means that she's completely alone in the cold, sterile emergency room when the nurses come in to poke and prod her. 

She's alone when they tell her that she is indeed in premature labor. 

She's at 33 weeks. All she can do is shake her head back and forth and try not to moan. They give her drugs to try and stop the contractions. They can't do anything for the stream running through her head; it's too soon, it can't happen yet, I was supposed to have more time, HE was supposed to have more time, I can't do this, I can't do any of this, why did I ever think I could, why did I ever think I was good enough.

She's so alone that she unloads on the poor nurse who takes her blood in the ER, who thankfully does not seem perturbed by the strange girl gripping her arms desperately while trying not to sob. 

"I made this happen didn't I? There was something I did wrong." 

The nurse smiles softly. 

"Honey, babies do what they want. You should probably learn that lesson now. You're young, but not enough to seriously increase your risk. You're history says you don't do drugs, you got regular prenatal care, and don't have any other health problems. You're practically skin and bones now, and were likely very underweight before your pregnancy. Nothing you could do about that. Not much you can do about work stress either."

Emma flops her head back "I'm a grocery store cashier". 

The nurse smiles "We all start at the bottom. It sounds to me like you have done everything you could to make sure your child was born healthy. Don't let forces beyond your control make you feel guilty. All you can do is be here for him now". 

(Emma finds out years later there's an increased risk of preterm labor in low income women who are on their feet a lot, and the nurse likely knew this. She thanks the woman who's name she doesn't even remember for not telling, and just telling her what she needed to hear)

She's up on the maternity ward by the time Neal gets to the hospital. She has to tell the nurse to let him in, and by the time she does, all she can do is cling to him and try not to cry. 

Neal's got his arms tangled up underneath her, twining with the wires she's hooked up to. 

"How are you feeling?"

Emma tries to snort in derision but can't. She's sweating so hard that her hospital gown and hair are soaked. Every contraction that comes makes her feel like she doesn't have legs anymore. And despite Neal's presence, she's terrified. 

"It's too early. They put me on drugs to slow things down and other drugs to help him grow a little more, but they say it's going to be a day or two at most."

"God...fuck we were supposed to have more time to figure this out"

Emma can feel her eyes welling up as she tries to force a smile. 

"I don't know if I can do this". 

Neal squeezes her hand. "I'm glad I'm not the only one. But I'm not going anywhere". 

Once the doctor comes in and sticks the big needle in her back that makes everything below her waist numb, Emma's world kind of seems outside of her. 

She remembers Neal gripping her hand and trying to soothe her. The doctors and nurses- she can't even tell them apart right now- shifting and talking in front of her. She remembers that she could still feel what was happening even though there wasn't any pain. 

She's really glad for that. She's not sure she could have stopped herself from panicking if she had been in pain like she'd heard about. 

The cloud ends when she sees one of the nurses hold Henry up, all red and sticky. 

It ends because he's stone silent. 

All the panic she thought she swallowed boils right back up again. She tries to sit up, but she's still numb. She starts to open her mouth, when the same nurse flicks the bottom of Henry's feet a few times and another sticks a kind of tube in his nose and mouth and after a moment that seems like a millennium he finally starts to cry. 

Emma doesn't manage to swallow this sob. 

One nurse cleans him off and wraps him in a blanket and finally hands him to Emma. 

He's so small. Tiny, pink, fragile. Tiny little fingers and toes, even a little tuft of brown hair. She's overwhelmed, being overcome by a tenderness she's never felt before. It's like warmth is exploding out of every part of her body. 

She barely gets to hold him for a moment before one of the nurses has to take him away and her heart seizes. 

"We need to get him into NICU as soon as we can. There's just a few more things to check up on with you and then you can go with him."

Neal's hovering off to the side "do you want me to...?"

Emma bites her lip and nods "Go with him". 

The next fifteen minutes are a blur of, no you don't need stitches (thank GOD), the epidural should wear off in an hour or two (not soon enough) and can you sign these papers (Henry's birth certificate gives her pause but she'll talk to Neal about that later) here we can take you over in this wheelchair. 

Emma slumps down in the chair. She wants normal back and she's not even sure what this is or was or is going to be.

Neal's sitting beside the incubator when the nurse wheels her in. Henry's hooked up to a couple of beeping monitors. There are holes in the sides bigger than his whole head. He looks even smaller inside than he did in her arms. The doctor is checking something on a clipboard, but perks up when she comes in. 

"Mom's here, good!"

"Mom" sounds bizarre. Emma's not sure if it will ever stop.

The doctor is a strangely perky man with a short beard and glasses. He looks more like a high school science teacher, complete with brightly colored tie, than a doctor. 

"As I was saying, Henry is at this point perfectly healthy. Babies born at his age do very well almost all of the time. We need to keep him at least a little while, because the biggest problem will be making sure he grows and gains weight as he should be, keeping an eye out for any potential problems, and making sure he doesn't try to act his age and forget to do things he needs to, like keep warm, or breathe."

He chuckles. Emma didn't think it was very funny. 

"It's about time for his first feeding. I supposed I should probably ask before I go into the breastfeeding lecture whether or not you have considered the options?"

"Yes" Emma says, and she hates that she's blushing a little, "It seemed like the best thing I could do, and it's free to boot, so". 

"Well, Mary here is our lactation consultant. Infants at this stage can breastfeed, but often need help latch and sometimes have trouble with coordinating swallowing and breathing, so she'll be here to help and answer any questions."

It takes something like forty minutes, but Mary finally gets Henry to take one of Emma's nipples without losing his grip, and then

"Oh god that is officially the weirdest thing I have ever felt."

It is oddly peaceful though. Once Mary is satisfied that Henry isn't choking, she leaves. Emma sits quietly for a while before telling Neal, 

"You should go back to the apartment. Clean up a little. Set up the crib everything. It's not like we had time to..."

She trails off, staring at Henry again. He's going to be fine. He's going to come home with them. He's going to be in their apartment all the time. None of it seems real. 

Later, the nurses come through and check each of the babies on shift change, and Emma can hardly tear herself away from watching the incubator. 

She hears one of them mutter later, "Can someone tell Welfare Princess Barbie that we need room to work". 

Emma snaps. It's been far too long since she's been properly angry. 

Her voice is strangely even when she approaches and lets out with 

"What the fuck did you just call me?"

Emma's small, and she still can't stand well even though the epidural has worn off. But the fire fueling through her every cell must be apparent, because the nurse (and oh god she barely looks older than her) visibly recoils. 

"Look, lady, I don't know you, and you don't know me. How about, we just go about our business and save me the fucking judgment. You have no idea what I've gone through to get here, no idea how precious this is to me, and no idea how hard I will fight to keep it". 

It feels good honestly. Apparently living the straight life has left Emma with some stuff pent up. 

She sits by the incubator a while longer. Henry's sleeping now, his first nap. 

She wonders what babies dream about. 

There's a couple of small holes that she can reach through and touch him. The doctor had said to avoid overstimulating him when he was resting, as premature babies could be very fussy, but she can't help it. 

She reaches in just one hand, lets two fingers rest upon his hand, the one with the plastic tube sticking out of it. 

"I'm sorry kid. Sorry that you had to come out so fast and so small. Sorry you came into the world with barely adult parents wearing thrift store clothes living in a tiny apartment. We can't afford to buy your stuff new, but we'll still try to get you the best we can. I'm sorry I'm so angry sometimes. I'm sorry your dad doesn't seem to exist. We're trying, we're trying as hard as we can. We love you. I just hope you know."

She takes another deep breath before continuing. 

"People are going to think less of you your whole life. They think they'll know you just based on stupid, superficial things. You can't take any of it to heart. You have to challenge them, hit back, show them that you know who you are."

Before Emma knows it, the clock says 9 PM and one of the nurses comes to tell her visiting hours are over and she should go back to her room and try to get some rest. 

It's hard. She had to drag herself away. Has to tell herself that he won't disappear as soon as she's gone. 

The hospital bed is hard, and Emma's still sore and uncomfortable from birth, but after some tossing, she manages to drift off. The nurse comes in to check on her, and it takes longer for her to drift off the second time.

She's not dreaming anything unusual, just a forest of some kind, but she still starts awake when Neal comes back from the apartment. 

"Hey, I didn't want to wake you" he says as he tosses a backpack on the chair next to her bed. His voice is soft, thick. 

Emma glances at her watch, it's barely eleven. 

Neal slips off his shoes and slides into the narrow bed behind her, throwing an arm over her waist. 

"You'll probably get in trouble if the nurses find you". 

"Has trouble ever bothered us before?"

It is true. 

They lay there quietly for a while, breathing evenly but not sleeping.

And then suddenly, everything seems perfectly clear to Emma. 

She rolls over, and faces him. Their noses are so close that she can feel him breathing. 

"Marry me" she whispers, eyes still shut. 

He doesn't say anything at first, just looks at her. 

Emma opens her eyes, and fixes him with a deadly serious face. 

"Marry me. We have a home, we have a child, our lives are starting to resemble something normal. Marry me, lets make it official, and you can start to exist. You're name will be written down. I'm a US citizen, they won't be able to do anything to you if they find out..."

She's babbling, she knows it, but she can't stop. 

And as she goes on, Neal inches closer to her and when his lips are a hairs breaths away from hers, whispers

"I love you" 

Emma closes the gap. It's a brief kiss, but one of the sweetest. 

"Is that a yes?"

He laughs "Yes Emma, I'll marry you".

"Good". 

He's actually pouting.

"...you wanted to ask me didn't you"

He pouts some more "...yes"

"If I had waited for you to do that, we'd be ninety by then". 

Then they're kissing again, and Emma has to remember they're technically in public and anyone could walk in and her hands have to stay in appropriate places. 

She grasps his hands so she can get a word or two out. 

"I filled out Henry's birth certificate earlier. I put him down as Henry Cassidy Swan."

By the time the nurses come to check on her again, they're both asleep again.


	8. Somewhere near Salinas

Henry's released from the NICU at two weeks old, three days before Emma's nineteenth birthday.

She thinks it's a terrific present. She's so sick of the hospital by then that she can't see herself ever willingly setting foot there again. 

Amy, who's been Henry's primary nurse during his stay, is less enthusiastic. 

"Now that Henry's at 35 weeks, we can classify him as 'full term' and the hospital discharges them as early as possible to save on costs"

She gazes at Emma and Neal sadly. She's barely thirty, but already has the air of being done with her world. Emma feels like she sees that a lot. Neal's holding Henry a little too tight, even after being admonished by Amy that he could loosen up, "He won't jump out, he's not a football". 

"I hate to say it, but since you two aren't insured, they're probably pushing even harder. 35 weekers can be completely fine one minute, and then be a disaster the next. I'm going to prepare you a packet of discharge instructions that will tell you everything you need to keep an eye out for, and I'll talk to Dr. Hyland about giving you an apnea moniter to take home". 

Emma was discharged two days after Henry's birth. Despite this, she still spends every minute she can at the hospital. It had taken one frustrating day at the store and on the phone to start her maternity leave early. 

One of the doctors had left her a bunch of paperwork on WIC and Medicaid too, since he told her she had signs of chronic malnourishment. 

I used to live in a car and be lucky to get a sandwich and a stolen candy bar for the day, she wants to say, no fucking wonder I'm so skinny. 

And so the day comes and they fit Henry into his carseat. Amy shows them how to hook up the apnea monitor, and tells them to use it when he's sleeping, and when they can't be close to him. 

Emma hates it. The leads look like something out of the hospital and they're bringing it straight into their home. 

But she listens dutifully still. 

When they're outside, Neal's on the passenger side, seat pushed forward, figuring out how to strap him in. Henry's sleeping, in his little blue blanket sleeper. 

"Why does he have to face the back?"

"I don't know, but Amy said it's supposed to be like that til he's six months old". 

She gets into the driver's seat and glances over her shoulder. The seat is in place, but Neal is still struggling with the seat belt straps. 

The seat takes up almost half the backseat. 

"...I never noticed how small this car is...how did we both used to fit back there?"

"Creativity and the flexibility of youth". 

"I don't think even I could sleep there now...it feels like I've lived a thousand years". 

"It's a good thing we could stand each other right off the bat, or the whole arrangement would have been a lot more unpleasant". 

Emma snorts "Please, if I couldn't stand you, I would have kicked you out then and there. Left you in that alley". 

It's gallows humor, she knows. Laughing at their past, pretending their present isn't so scary. 

She carries Henry up the stairs to the apartment in his carrier. Neal brings up the rear carrying the hospital bags.

"You didn't have to carry all of them, I could have managed one or two". 

"You shoved him out two weeks ago, the least I can do is carry his stuff".

And even though it irritates her, Emma lets it slide. 

Neal set the crib up next to the couch. The wall the two rooms share is right next to their beds, so they can hear him. They did get a baby moniter, but they both felt better with as little physical distance as possible. Their room isn't large enough to fit the crib practically. Emma hates that wall. 

Neal pulls a dish of pasta out of the refrigerator and heats it up. Emma goes down to the basement and does a load of laundry. Susan and the boys stop by to say hello. 

Susan gives them a bag of hand me down baby clothes, some in sizes he won't need for over a year. 

"They grow so fast you'll be happy for anything". 

Susan looks completely at ease holding Henry. Emma's more than a little jealous. Noah had taken a close look, proclaimed that "I thought he'd be bigger" and joined his brother watching TV. 

By the end of the night, Emma's exhausted, but her and Neal are trading turns on the couch holding Henry, neither really willing to go to bed yet. 

It's a simple night, a good one. 

And it's a good thing, because the next months are full of some of the worst nights Emma could imagine. 

Intellectually, Emma knew that babies cried. Often a lot. She had been around enough young children in care to know this. 

But she had never known how absolutely bone deep the anguish those cries could bring.

Henry's wailing in her arms one night waiting for Neal to finish getting the stuff so they can change him, when she finally asks with tears in her own eyes. 

"How on earth do you always know what's wrong with him when I never do?"

Neal takes Henry and lays him down on the pad. 

"Babies only really cry for a handful of reasons. They're hungry, they're wet, they're too cold or two hot or tired, or something's hurting them."

He finishes, and throws the diaper in the trash. 

"Some of those are easier to figure out than the others. They have no other way to tell us. They haven't seen enough of the world to cry because they're sad yet."

Neal is almost shockingly good with Henry. He still hasn't lost that sense that he's going to break him when he holds him, but he's good at making him smile, finds it easy to talk to him, to make him stop crying or fussing. 

Emma's finally got a good hold of holding him, but she can't beat the sense that even if she doesn't completely break the person in her arms, that he's still going to grow up to hate her. 

The apnea monitor doesn't make anything better. Every time she has to hook Henry up to it, she feels like she's leaving him back at the hospital alone even though her and Neal are just a wall away. 

The worst night is about a month in. Emma had been slightly awake, already sort of used to the rhythm of middle of the night feedings, and Neal sound asleep when the shrill screech of the moniter jolts them both awake, through the speaker of the baby monitor and clear through the wall. 

The leads have slipped off Henry's chest, He's awake and screaming at the noise. Emma fixes it back on, and the monitor stops. She cuddles him to her chest in hopes of reassuring him, and when he finally quiets, she slumps down against the wall by his crib. 

She turns and realizes Neal's slumped beside her. It takes her a minute before she recognizes the lines on his face as tear tracks. 

She's never seen him cry before. 

He's gazing straight, in her direction, but completely fixed, for a moment before saying,

"If we lose him, that's it. We'll both be lost". 

Emma's nineteenth birthday comes and goes unmentioned. 

In the middle of December, they all get sick. 

Henry's hit first, with a runny nose and general fussiness. The visit to the clinic goes easily, and Emma is reassured, told to keep an eye on him and come back if he gets worse. It passes in a few days, and he's back to his usual happy self. 

A few days later, it hits Emma like a ton of bricks. 

She never really got sick as a child, and she definitely doesn't ever remember being so sick that all she could bear to do was lay in bed staring at the ceiling and had to be helped to sit up and eat before collapsing back down into the mattress in a pile of sweat soaked miserable limbs. 

Her head feels stuffed with cotton, her mind in a bizarre, cloudy version of the world. Her muscles ache like she's just run a marathon. 

She's sick enough that it leaves Neal to take care of Henry. She apparently was still able to sit up and feed him, but she hardly remembers. 

It's not until the fog in her head starts to lift that she starts to notice the dark circles forming under Neal's eyes, and stumble in his gait. 

A few days after she's back on her feet, she wakes up and can't get him to move or speak anything other than gibberish. 

She calls 911, the waves of panic rushing up her chest like the rising tide. 

Cowered in the back of the ambulance cradling Henry, while the EMT, a young woman with a dark ponytail secures Neal to the stretcher, checks and marks things down and asks her questions. 

She sounds embarassingly near tears when she asks "Will he be OK?"

"It just sounds like the flu to me, from the looks of him probably coupled with dehydration and exhaustion. They can give him fluids and antivirals at the hospital and give him time to recover. He's young, he should come back fine. Has he been around anyone other than you two?".

Emma shakes her head. "We were both sick last week, he had to take care of everything. I should have realized he would get sick too, I could never convince him to get his fucking flu shot-"

"If you got it and he didn't, it probably wouldn't have helped if you both got the same strain. There's no real way to tell who will . 

Emma stares down at Henry. There was never anything they predict. And it always seemed like the worst just had it's way of finding them.

The hospital is as awful as it was before. The ER and adult wards are almost worse. There's no attempts to soften the sterile facility. Neal's bed is behind a curtain next to an elderly man who sounds as though he must be attempting to cough up a lung. 

Once he's hooked up and rehydrated, he jerks awake slowly and tries to talk. 

"Sleep" Emma tells him. 

When he wakes the next morning, fully aware, she lays into him. 

"What the hell is wrong with you? Why the fuck didn't you say anything?"

He's still pretty pale, and sweaty, hooked up to lines and and a plastic tube in his nose. He looks completely pathetic.

"Nothing you could do, someone had to take care of you guys. It wasn't so bad, I didn't want you to worry".

If possible, she snaps even more. 

"Didn't want me to worry? What the fuck did you think was going to happen when I realized? And there was something we could do! I could have called Susan or Judy and asked if they could take Henry for a little while! The rest of the chores could wait while we both got better!"

She steels her voice, makes it quieter. 

"Do you know what the doctor told me last night? The one with the big hands who looks like that bartender who threw us out that one time? He said that people always seem to forget that people do still die of the flu, even today. Take a guess to how that made me feel". 

Neal looks like she's kicked him in the face. Good. 

She doesn't speak to him for three days after they get back home. 

Christmas comes and goes unnoticed. 

Emma's due to go back to work in January. She calls the store's office. 

Yolanda, the HR manager, tells her "So very sorry, but during hte course of your leave, the position has been eliminated to save costs. If you would like to reapply, please contact..."

Emma's blood goes cold. 

She tries to tell herself that there's a million other unskilled and low paid service jobs out there. She tries to tell herself that she's worth more than them.

But all she can see as she sits at the kitchen table with her face in her hands, is the pile of unpaid bills, and the mounting feeling in her gut, that she wasn't ready to go back to work at all. 

Neal comes home after a day spent helping an old lady clean her garage, and finds her still at the table, rocking Henry's carrier on the chair next to her. 

All he can do is hold her hand. It doesn't help. 

The medical bills start coming in the next week. Emma ignores them. The other bills are harder to ignore. 

The power shuts off first. They break out the jar where Neal has been keeping his pay. It's never going to be enough. 

A phone call consisting entirely of begging keeps their water on another month. A trip to the pawn shop follows. Emma loads up the car with anything they can spare. It breaks her heart a little, but she still pawns the last watch her and Neal had stashed. 

It covers February's rent, but isn't enough for the next month. 

They get evicted the last week of March. 

Emma's silent as they load everything back into the car. 

When Neal shuts the trunk lid, he looks at her. 

Emma's clothes still hang off of her, despite the remaining baby weight. Her hair is stringy, her feet shoved into five dollar flip flops. Neal's shirt is torn on one arm, and his jeans have grass stains on the legs. 

He finally speaks. 

"Was it worth it? To try, even if we ended up right back where we started?"

Henry is sleeping soundly on Emma's shoulder. He's growing into a remarkably easy, happy child. He jerks in his sleep, and his fingers grasp onto her hand. 

"Yeah, yeah it was". 

She straps Henry into his car seat. 

Her and Neal flip the coin. She wins. 

And so, Emma gets into the driver's seat. They take the car and drive back into the night.


	9. He's lookin for that home

It's both better and worse than either of them remember. 

Space is a bigger issue. Neal and Emma hadn't terribly minded being squashed together before, but adding in an infant and it's just too much. When Henry cries, suddenly the whole car seems to collapse on itself. And there's no way around it- changing diapers in the backseat of a car is disgusting. While the reusable diapers one of the nurses at the hospital had tried to sell Emma on would be great for saving money, the idea of carrying them around until they could be washed was unbearable. She's managed to grow used to the itch of unwashed hair again, but she has her limits. 

They have to be extra careful not to get busted by the cops too. Even though they're trying their best to stick to their promise of the straight and narrow, even vagrancy raps can stick. They're both completely aware of how much trouble Neal would be in even if they never connected him to the theft in Portland. The idea of Henry ending up in the system if something happened to the two of them paralyzes Emma with fear. 

Neal can't take many of the jobs he used to, since they've lost their contact number. Early mornings, they leave him at the local hardware store with the other men out front, and see what he can get for the day. He's got a charming smile, but some of the other men look at him suspiciously. Most of the money he makes go to gas and diapers. There's fewer bills now, but more at stake. 

Emma tries not to stray too far from where they've parked. If the car got stolen again, they would be well and truly fucked. Thankfully, the chipped paint, torn interior, and backseat crammed with junk appear to be a pretty good theft deterrent. 

Emma's slipping back into her old attitude too. It starts one day when she's at the laundromat and she feels a tall man with a long beard get just a little too close behind her. 

She squares her shoulders, hisses under her breath. Pulls her face into it's best stone cold don't-fuck-with-me expression. She casually slips the folding knife out of her shoe and plays with it a little. 

She can still bite. 

There are the good things too. 

They have a good grasp of the town . Emma knows that the public pools has unmonitored showers. Neal knows where to park at night without being towed or cited. 

Emma has her WIC checks now too, so they always get some actual good food- fruit, milk, peanut butter. She had begged Susan to let her have them sent to her box at the complex, and she would stop by to pick them up once a month. Once Henry turns one though, they're portions will be cut- only enough to cover him, not the two of them and whatever she could convince Neal to take. 

She wants to yell at him again, remind him of what the last time he pulled the martyr act. But Neal has a point- Henry's still primarily breastfeeding, and if she doesn't eat, he won't either. So most of the time, Emma shuts her mouth and takes the last banana before it goes bad. Neal found an old cooler in a dumpster after a few days. It still smells vaguely of fish, but it fits in the back seat, and the seal keeps the bugs out and keeps things fresh a little longer. 

And it's true she does get to spend plenty of time with Henry now. Most days she spends at the library, pouring over the want ads and the apartment listings in the newspaper. She tries to take Henry down to the playground for at least a little while each day. If it's not too hot, he'll nap happily in the shade, and Emma will watch the other moms and kids around her, and wonder if she looks anything like them, or if she just looks like the child playing pretend that she feels like. 

Spring passes, almost without incident.

The incident that does, involves Emma repeatedly spotting a stocky, dark haired man hanging around. 

Emma flies into survival mode when she sees him, even early on when the likelihood of another explanation was certainly possible. 

The fourth or fifth time she catches him by the car, it's in the evening by the pool. Neal's taken Henry inside to change him and see if he can catch a shower himself, so Emma's alone. 

He's just leaning on the passenger side door, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. Emma grasps the handle of the knife in her pocket firmly, and stalks towards him with as much intimidation on her face as she can muster. 

"Okay, who the fuck are you, and what's your business here?"

He gives her a smile that she guesses he thinks is charming, but just reads as slimy. She's seen them too many times. 

"Hoping to chat with your boy when he gets out for a minute". 

Emma fumes. 

"You're not a friend, I've never seen you before. Neither of us have family. Neither of us owes anyone any money. Unless you're going to offer him a job, you have no business talking to Neal, so kindly fuck off."

She looks him up and down. 

He gives her another smile. "Maybe it's a bad time", and he walks away without another word. 

Emma wants to chase after him, but it won't do any good. 

Neal's coming out behind her holding a freshly washed Henry wrapped in a towel, and Emma just blurts it out. 

She points at the retreating figure. "Do you know him?"

Neal hesitates a bit before saying "No". 

Emma stares. He only looks a touch guilty. There's something inside her that is screaming "BULLSHIT". 

"You sure? Because I've seen him around a lot lately."

She takes Henry from him and straps him into his car seat. 

"Neal, I know we've both done stuff we're not proud of. Both of us have pasts. If something in yours is coming back, I think I have a right to know."

Emma takes a deep breath before pulling out the big guns. 

She continues quietly. "When Henry was born, you said you would marry me. That's as good as a piece of paper to me. If something could put us in danger, you don't get to just keep it to yourself anymore. It threatens all three of us". 

Neal sighs. Then, with eyes so solemn that he appears older than he ever has, says "Get in and shut the doors". 

Henry has already lulled himself off into a post bath sleep when Emma locks the driver side door, and says, "OK, spill". 

Neal's slumped low in his seat. It's as though all the life has left him. These previous weeks, all that they've been through together, Neal has always had a spark to him. Now it's gone dim. Whatever it is that he's about to tell her has been eating away at him. 

"I grew up far from here. Little town, in the middle of a forest. I don't remember ever leaving it until I got older. My dad had a bad reputation, he'd injured himself to get out of military service, and everyone thought he was trash for it." 

He's got his head laid back against the head rest, he's not even looking at Emma at all. 

"My mom left when I was little. I barely remember the time before she left, just that she was always unhappy. She finally couldn't take being with my dad anymore". 

Emma winces. She had always known Neal had as many hangups as she did about child abandonment, now she knows why. 

"Growing up, everyone treated my dad terribly, but he always loved me and made sure I was taken care of. But when I was fourteen, he took a job that gave him incredible power over the people in our village. And he used it, and abused it. Everyone was terrified of him, and no one would even get close to me for fear of his wrath."

Emma's lost in the story. There's something about it that feels so bizarre and she can't put her finger on it, but when she looks at Neal, she knows he's not lying. 

"I hated it. Being feared was as bad as being hated. I tried to tell him that we should leave, find somewhere else to live where no one knew us, start over."

His face is pained. More pained even than he had looked when Emma was in labor. 

"But he wouldn't, so I left on my own. Never looked back, tried to forget everything about where I came from and who I was. I was taken in by another family for a while, but then that went south, and I was out on my own again. I got picked up by the cops, gave them a fake name, and you pretty much know the story from there."

Emma's slowly processing what he's been saying. "And where does that weird guy come in?"

"Back in Portland, after you grabbed the watches, he knocked me over in an alley. I thought he was full of shit at first, but he knew who I was. He knew my father, where I came from, even my real name". 

Emma can't help herself. 

"What is your real name". 

"Baelfire"

Can't help herself. She snorts out loud. 

Neal rolls his eyes, "I know, I know. But he knew, and I don't really know how, but anyone connected with my father is bad news."

He pauses, looks like he's trying to figure out how to phrase the next part. 

"But it wasn't just that. This guy- he told me his name was August, which means nothing to me- he knew about you too". 

Emma's blood chills in her veins. "What?"

"He knew your name, he knew how you grew up, he even knew you were found by the side of the road....and there's something else." 

"What else could there be?"

"I told you, I'm not from here, but there's way more gap between what you're probably thinking of as "not here" and what it actually is". 

He takes a deep breath. "There's magic where I'm from". 

Emma starts laughing uncontrollably. "You can't be serious'. 

"Emma, look at me. Has anything I've said felt like a lie?" 

She makes herself calm down. "No, know it doesn't. But just because you believe something doesn't make it true."

"I know what I know Emma. And the bulk of what August was saying about magic, it wasn't about me, it was about you". 

"What, did he say I was some kind of magic chosen child?"

"...yes actually". 

"Seriously?"

"He told me I should leave you, that me staying would just stop you from fulfilling your destiny". 

Emma gets serious again. "He what?"

"I told him to fuck off. I've had enough of leaving and being left in my life". 

"You can't seriously believe him."

"What does it matter Emma? Magic never did anything to help me when I lived where it existed. I doubt it will do anything for us here. We're surviving, we have each other. Our lives are wrapped up inside of this car, what does some curse mean to us now? Maybe in nine years we'll road trip to the little town in Maine you're supposed to save when you turn twenty eight. Maybe everything will be okay then. But for now, lets just try to keep this asshole off our back". 

"Ugh, Maine, why? I don't want to go back there! And why twenty eight, why not sixteen or eighteen or any of the other significant ages?" She's trying to keep her voice light. Trying not to reveal the swirl of emotions in her gut. Because what Neal's saying is crazy. It has to be. 

"Guess we'll just have to find out". 

Emma doesn't say anything else. Neither does Neal. Life goes on as it was. Summer comes, along with it the terrible, oppressive heat, the bugs, and the crowds. They park at night with the windows rolled down, and Emma spends most of her days trying to hide from the terror of the sun. Henry gets his first sunburn and it miserable for a whole week. 

The first official weekend of summer brings with it a minor miracle though. 

It's a comparatively nice day, so they take out Henry's stroller. Emma spent a few precious quarters washing all their clothes yesterday, and they've all managed to bathe within the same day. They look presentable enough that when they're walking down the street, everyone ignores the trash bag Emma has strapped to the stroller for bottles and cans people have thrown away. 

There's not really much to look at, but they're trying to figure out how much they've got left for the month. 

"My WIC balance is down to $5.85". 

"I still have $10 from helping build that shed Wednesday". 

"Do we need soap or shampoo?"

"Soap's running low, but there's enough shampoo to use for both. Do you need tampons?"

Emma hates that she still flushes. "Not for another two weeks. Diapers should probably hold out for another week, but we have to be careful. What fruit's on sale this week". 

"Oranges again."

Emma winces. Oranges give Henry diarrhea. 

"We still have a lot of cereal though. That ten boxes for $10 sale was great, even if it's kind of messy to eat in the car". 

"So see how many more cans of cooked beans and pineapple I can get, and save the rest for gas?" 

"That should work". 

"I never thought I would miss your rice and beans so much". 

"I never thought I would miss cooking". 

They're paused outside a tattoo parlor. Not one like one's Emma had seen either- there was a collage out front of the guy's work, and no neon signs in sight. 

The artist- a tall, pale man in his 30's with small golden glasses and a goatee- comes out and tacks up another drawing- a flaming pirate ship. 

Neal asks "Hey how did you learn to do that?" 

The guy (who doesn't really look like he's paying much attention) says "This is what four and a half years at art school gets you". 

"Do you have to go to school to learn to do tattoos?"

"No, just pass all the health code and city bureaucracy, it's better off not going to school all they do is try to put you into their little boxes..."

Neal interrupts him, "I've always liked to draw, you looking for any help around the shop? Cleaning or something, and you could teach me a thing or two?"

The man stands up straighter, lost in thought.

"Well...I have had a few complaints about the state of the shop, as if organization is any sign of artistic genius...but having an employee sounds like an awful lot of paperwork..."

Neal interrupts quickly, "I can take cash for payment, then you won't have to do any paperwork at all! Call me an unpaid apprentice or something". 

The man pauses for a moment, then nods. 

"Come by Monday around noon and we'll see what can be done with you". 

He goes back inside so quickly that it seems almost like he was never there.

Emma lets out a breath she didn't realize she was holding, "What the hell just happened?"

Neal turns to her, smiling, some of his old spark back in his face. 

"Where I come from...we call a kind of magic" 

Emma rolls her eyes. He's going to use this to needle her, she can tell. 

"I call it luck"

"Luck or whatever it is, I'll take it."

"That guy didn't even ask to see any of your work!"

"But I do have some I can show him! That notepad in the trunk, it's full of stuff I've drawn!"

He reaches down and scoops Henry out of his stroller. 

"Don't quote me on this, either of you, but maybe, just maybe, things are looking up".


	10. Nothing don't mean nothing, hon, if it aint free

If Emma had to describe the next year, it would be nomadic. 

Neal's boss pays him a hundred dollars a week under the table, for anything from two afternoons to more than fifty hours. 

"That's way under minimum wage"

"What am I going to do, tell on him?"

It's not near enough to get them back out of the car, but it's a cushion. And Neal's boss, who's name it turns out, is Carl, let's him bring Henry when he works. 

"Oh yeah, I love kids, just keep him in back away from the stuff". 

So Neal hauls out the little pop up playpen from the trunk and tries to teach Henry to stand and walk between learning to use the tattoist tools. 

"I do like working there, Carl's really talented. But I hate some of the people who come in, and I don't like having Henry there when they are."

"There's not much else we can do. Day care is really expensive."

It's not just day care. The price of gas skyrockets during the summer, and Neal's pay can only go so far. Diapers, gas, soap, shampoo. WIC is getting thinner. The car is starting to make noises when it goes up inclines. Fruit prices start to rise with the season. More dry, crumbly almost-bad bread for everyone.

Without having to take care of Henry all day, Emma's thrown herself into the task of finding another job. 

It's hard. Filling out applications is nearly impossible, so she keeps trying to find somewhere that will give her an interview on the spot. It doesn't go well. 

Every single store she visits, she just sees ghost of old management, of old customers. She knows she needs this, but still feels trapped. 

The days when its safe, she collects bottles and scrap and turns them in for the deposit. It's a half tank of gas on a tough week. 

Her salvation comes at the end of summer. It wasn't even intentional. 

It was the kind of late summer sweltering that only Florida could do. The heat that made everything feel like it had been soaked in swamp water, and made the air feel like it weighted a million pounds. The kind of heat that made it seemingly impossible to do anything outside at all that required even the most basic physical movement or intellectual thought. 

Emma had, after another attempt to walk down a street, taken refuge in a drug store. It's canned air relieving the humidity induced malaise. 

She was standing in the pharmacy section, contemplating whether she could spare the fifty cents to buy an ice cream cone from the kiosk at the front of the store when she sees something out of the corner of her eye. 

It's a kid, maybe sixteen years old. Tanned, wearing polo shirt and khakis and carrying a messenger bag. And Emma swears she's seen him walk past this section five times. He's staring straight ahead, not looking down for hardly anything. 

She stands on the corner, reading the back of an antacid bottle, until he circles by again. 

Emma walks quietly to the pharmacy counter and tells the man working there, "you might want to keep an eye on the kid in red, pretty sure he's trying to rip you off". 

She hangs around the counter a while longer. She wants to see. 

And sure enough, about ten minutes later, the kid's being escorted to the back of the store by two people with radios. 

One of them, a black woman with glasses, stands outside to fill out paperwork and make a phone call. 

"What did you catch him with?"

She looks up surprised, "Oh, you're the customer who tipped us off?"

"Yeah, he was acting funny". 

"Bag full of Sudafed. He was cherry picking anything off the shelf that had it". 

"Knew the kid looked twitchy". 

The other woman laughs. "You have a good eye. Ever think of working loss prevention?"

Emma is surprised. "Are you hiring?"

They are, it turns out. The woman, her name turns out to be Kaitlyn, says their single full timer had left to become a private investigator. 

"Everyone else who works here is in school and can't commit to full time hours." She tells her. "We were going to end up short, which would mean leaving the store with no one a few hours a day. If you can start right away, we just need to get your background check and drug test, and you can come back and start that day". 

Emma spends more than she has in weeks to buy a disposable cell phone she that she can give them a phone number. It physically hurts her. But it gives her something light in her gut when she leaves to get Neal and Henry. 

She finds them both sitting on the floor of the back room of the tattoo parlor while Carl finishes up his last customer. 

"Hey, Emma, watch!" 

Neal picks Henry up and sets him on his feet at the edge of a plastic chair. Next, Neal picks up a design he's been working on, for a man who had wanted a forest tattooed on his back. He tilts it a few feet away so Henry can see it. The child stares, in awe, then slowly stars moving his feet, supporting himself with his fingers. 

Emma's laugh spills out of her like hot soup. 

"He'll be walking on his own soon" Neal says proudly. 

Emma looks at the picture. Neal's embellished it, filled the forest with lakes and tiny fireflies, and just the top turrets of a castle that can be seen at the horizon. 

Emma thinks before saying, "Are you going to try and convince me that he knows where he came from?"

"I think he just likes the pretty colors". 

Emma goes for her drug test, grateful that she never fell for that vice. Her background check checks out, and she breathes a sigh of relief. She's assigned a radio, a pair of cuffs, and learns the layout of the store. 

"They don't even have security cameras there," she grouses to Neal during a dinner of peanut butter on day old bagels and the last of a can of fruit cocktail, "You have to walk around and try to watch everyone. And there are all these things you have to check off before you can stop someone". 

"We probably ran into more than a few places like that". 

Emma shakes her head. 

"Most people aren't even trying. This woman today tried to shove a hair dryer down the front of her sweater and run. A hair dryer!". 

It's true, she does sometimes feel like a hypocrite. She had been shoplifting since she was eleven, and lived off of it for some time. 

But easily 90% of the people she detains aren't worth the pity. 

Tons of teenagers looking for a thrill. The store isn't in an especially high price area, but its always things like candy or makeup. 

Tweakers in the pharmacy, older guys in the camera area who are obviously going to sell what they grab. 

Women with strollers are the worst. Whether there's a kid or not, Emma has seen plenty slip items into the bottom of the stroller. She's seen them make older kids slip things in their backpacks. It makes her blood boil every time. 

But it's a full time job, even with low pay. And every little bit helps. 

When they've finally saved enough to move out of the car, Henry's walking uncertainly, and just starting to talk. 

Emma is actually a bit jealous that "dada" came out first. 

The only place they can afford is a two room shack- more of a shed really- on the corner of the property of a trailer part. There's a stove with half of a working burner, but no refrigerator. There is no bathroom- they use the communal one a couple hundred yards away. 

Most of the people at the park are nice, but there's a few who tip off Emma's radar. She can't put her finger on it, but it just makes her uneasy. 

But it's stable, and Neal likes having other families around. He says it reminds him of where he grew up, just without people hating them, and that it's good for Henry to have other children around. A couple of the families are Cuban, and some of Henry's first words end up being in Spanish. 

After Christmas though, Neal notices one of the guys from a few trailers over watching them. 

"Do you know him? I don't."

Emma glances out of the corner of her eye. 

"There's something familiar, but I can't put my finger on it". 

The guy stays there, and doesn't move. 

The next day at work, it clicks. 

She tells Kaitlyn that she's taking her break early and uses the store phone to call Neal at work. 

"Neal, I remember where I've seen him. Last week a cashier called me and a manager over to check up on a suspicious transaction. Suspected credit card fraud. He had a bunch of cards with his name, but when scanned another one came up. He bolted before we could call the cops, but I got his license and could identify him". 

"Shit". 

"Come pick me up after work?"

Emma's in full on panic mode for the next several weeks. Her heart rate constantly pounded. Constantly looking over her shoulder. It got bad enough that even Henry climbing into her lap made her jump out of her skin. 

She moves her knife from her boot to her pocket. She starts carring a length of chain in her other pocket. 

Carl lets them stay on his couch for a few weeks after it happens. Neal goes back to the park late at night to get their stuff, and talk to the guy in the office. There was never a lease, so there's nothing to break. 

They manage to never see that guy again. 

They stay with Carl for as long as Emma feels they can without being rude. They're back in the car for a few days before one of Emma's coworkers tell her that his parents are renting out their basement. 

Emma didn't think houses in Florida HAD basements. 

It turns out, they usually don't. And there is a reason why. 

The place is damn as hell. There's only one small window in the corner. They can't keep anything on the floor that might get water damaged. And there is less than no privacy. With Henry walking, its worse than the car was. They're not supposed to use the washer and dryer. They can only use the kitchen occasionally, so it's back to eating out of the cooler most of the time. There are no beds or cots, so they get on with piles of blankets until they save enough for sleeping bags. 

Emma wonders if the damp air could be bad for Henry. He's still awfully small, even if the doctor insists he's perfectly healthy. 

In spring, Carl declares that he's taught Neal all he can, and offers to let him take appointments of his own. His pay increases dramatically, and he ends up making almost as much as Emma does. He's good, and starts gaining a reputation. 

"He keeps telling me that I should expand. I think he knows I don't want to tattoo people for the rest of my life. I mentioned maybe wanting to go to art school, and then he started muttering about fascists again". 

"There's a community college in the middle of town, we could save and you could start taking classes there when we have enough". 

"You need an social security number to register" Neal replies grimly. 

Together, they make enough that they could probably afford their own apartment again. A shitty one, sure, but one of their own. 

Then the little crises start piling up. 

In spring, Neal gets a toothache that doesn't go away. He insists he's fine, but the longer it lasts, the grouchier he gets. When his cheek starts to swell, Emma calls around town. She finds a dentist who offers to look at it for free, and to pull it for $100 if they can pay cash. 

Once she manages to gather that amount up (taking a couple shifts from a coworker), she lays down an ultimatum. 

"Neal, either you go to the appointment I made, or I am going to get you drunk and pull the damn thing out myself with a pair of pliers". 

He calls her bluff at first, but when she produces the pliers they keep in the trunk of the car and a half bottle of vodka they took off a kid they detained that day, he relents. 

Emma's glad. She's not sure she would have been able to do it. 

Later in the summer, Emma's glasses fall off and break. She can't see well enough to work without them. 

When she goes to the store and finds out what a new pair would cost without insurance, she actually cries. 

The sales guy takes pity on her, and tells her a trick. She buys an old pair of glasses at a yard sale, and they punch out the lenses and replace them with newly made ones. She's missed four shifts at work. 

They still can't afford next month's power bill, and it gets cut off for a few days.

When Henry's second birthday gets close, he starts getting lots of ear infections. Full on, red faced crying and pulling at his ears until at one point they bled. After four rounds of antibiotics, the doctor at the clinic says he needs surgery to have tubes put in to drain fluid. 

When she realizes how much the surgery would have cost were her and Henry not on state insurance, is the closest Emma has ever come to considering returning to her criminal roots. 

But Henry tolerates the surgery well, and afterwards the abject misery the infections caused is gone. 

That year really isn't all bad though. 

The Christmas before they leave the trailer park, Emma buys Neal a set of oil pastels. Soon, he has managed to create enough drawings with the soft, blended colors that they could practically wallpaper with them. The dampness of the basement makes them smear, but when she goes back to the craft store, the sales woman gives her a cheap bottle of something that she says should make them stick. 

It's like Neal's in another world when he's drawing. He barely looks up from the paper. 

One day, Emma finds him drawing a dark haired woman with wings and a blue dress. 

"Friend from home?" She asks, voice bordering on teasing, but also not. 

"Not sure if I would call her a friend, but she is the reason I'm here". 

"A fairy?"

"She said she could send me and my dad to a land without magic, a land where we could start over. It didn't quite work that way". 

It still doesn't feel like a lie. 

Henry is growing into an almost shockingly easy child too. Quiet, affectionate, easy to please. On his second birthday, Emma buys them a little chocolate cake and a jug of lemonade, and they go to the park and put two candles in it, and Henry gets more of it on his face than in his mouth, but its still the best damn day Emma's had in years. 

He's inherited his father's love of books too. Every week, Neal comes home from the library with a huge stack of picture books that the two of them tear through them on top of Henry's sleeping bag. He loves fairy tales and fantasy- dragons and mermaids and princesses in towers. Neal reads him as many as he can find, even if he always gets this strange, far-away look on his face. 

The Christmas after Emma turns twenty one, they find their own place again. 

It's not nice, not by a long shot. 

The paint is peeling from the walls. The shower never seems to get hot. The toilet clogs so often Neal buys a bucket, a huge plunger, a long stick and this weird coil of wire the guy at the store had called a snake that they keep handy. The one bedroom might as well be a closet. 

It's still theirs though. And the crises seem to have ceased.

They give Henry the one bedroom, section off part of the living room with a hanging bed sheet as their own. 

The first night, with Henry sleeping soundly, they get a chance to make love in peace for the first time in what seems like forever. 

After, with Neal still resting atop her, face pressed into the crook of her neck, he whispers, 

"I'm still going to marry you". 

Emma snorts. "You better. If you left me behind after all of this, I would seriously think you were mentally deranged".


	11. Windshield wipers slapping time, I was holding Bobby's hand in mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last regular chapter guys! Never dreamed I would even make it this far, for everyone who's stuck around. thank you!
> 
> Next up is a fairly lengthy epilogue wrapping things up, then I go to work on the sequel!

They get married in the week between Henry's third birthday and Emma's twenty-second. 

Much like the rest of their lives, it comes from a combination of careful planning, random happenstance, and complete unadulterated luck. 

It starts off one day when Neal comes home from the library with a stack of a book and a pensive look on his face. 

"We're going to have to go to Vegas". 

Emma cocks her head, one hand still concentrated on keeping Henry's lunch off his face.

"Do we suddenly have a massive surplus of money to lose?"

Neal tosses some papers onto the table beside her. 

"It is the only place in this country that will issue a marriage license without a birth certificate from both people". 

Emma swears. 

"I guess we're road tripping again". 

"I'll have to see how to get time off work". 

"And it will still cost a lot of money, not nearly as much as a regular wedding would be". 

"Guess it's time to make better use of the swear jar" Emma says, gesturing at the glass jar on the kitchen counter top, placed there by Neal when he'd realized Henry had started to repeat the colorful language Emma brought home from work. 

Emma pulls the jar to her and dumps the change in her pocket into it. 

There are a few wedding dresses that she has seen over the years in thrift shops. She always wonders how they got there, who objected, who ran, who died. Even though it seems ridiculous to her to spend so much money on a dress that you would only wear once, it does seem that if you actually should be getting married, than the dress should be something that suits you .

None of the dresses she finds suit Emma. They're all giant and fancy and make her feel like a child playing dress up. When she tries on one particularly flouncy one in a Goodwill, she catches sight of herself in the mirror and laughs. She looks like the dirty orphan from stories who sneaks into the palace and tries on the princess's clothes. 

The dress she ends up buying is new, from a regular department store. It's just a sundress, white eyelet with thin straps. It's not exactly Emma's usual style, but she feels like herself in it.

When she complains to Neal, he laughs, insisting that she has the easy of it. 

"At least wedding dresses are fancy because they're supposed to be. All the suit pants and shirts look the same to me, I can't figure out why some are so expensive". 

"Welcome to the world of fashion, where stuff costs more because they know you'll be willing to pay more". 

Neal finds their rings in the last place he would have thought, a yard sale. 

When Emma works Saturdays, he takes Henry and pushes his stroller through the neighborhoods, hunting out household appliances and children's toys and books. 

One that he goes to, the woman running it has a cardboard box of old jewellery. 

He tosses through it, not expecting to find much, except maybe something he could resell, but one of the rings he pulls out strikes him. 

It's a small ring, if it had been larger it would be obnoxious. The center is a small, dark red stone. The ring itself close to the stone is molded into leaves and petals, as though the stone is a rose. 

"24 karat gold" a voice behind Neal states. 

He turns, coming face to face with a middle aged woman in a floral blouse.

"The stone is a garnet, bit non traditional". 

He's still a bit struck. "How come you're selling it at a garage sale."

She shrugs. "It was my aunt's. from the second of her, I think...five marriages? Jackass ran off with his secretary. No sentimental value to anyone here at all."

Neal waffles a little bit "I don't really know...

"Here" the woman says. She fishes around in the box, eventually pulling out a plain matching band. 

"Bastard left his, so I have both parts of the set. You could take them both off my hands for $35". 

Neal's eyes bug "Seriously?"

"There's really no market for second hand jewellery. At least selling it here it might go to someone who would give it to someone instead of it being smelted". 

Neal turns it over in his head as he touches the little plastic bag she put the rings in on the way home. Part of him is still convinced that Emma is going to hate them. Her taste generally runs more towards the simple and modern than delicate and feminine. 

To his luck, she does love it. 

"God, I was afraid you were going to try to get one of those horrible fancy ones on TV...they're all so...tacky and ostentatious."

Emma plans carefully. She gathers all the info she can find from the library internet on Vegas wedding venues. 

It takes some planning because so many are so...cheesy. And the one's that aren't all seem to expect you to have like, guests. 

One night during dinner, she asks Neal, "Do you ever think about trying to find your family?"

He glances up from his drink. "Not really, I wouldn't even know where to start."

"I mean- there are people who make a living doing that- finding people. Deadbeat parents are their bread and butter. There was a girl from one of the families I was placed with whose mother was able to take her back after they tracked down her father and got him to pay..."

"Emma", final, if not harsh, "Even if they could find any of my family, I don't think it would matter. My father would only bring trouble upon us. Whoever he was before when he loved me, I believe is gone. And my mother...I doubt she ever wants to see me again."

Emma lets the issue slide, even if she thinks it's insane that Neal wouldn't at least want closure from the family that at least at one point loved him. 

They aim for October, when the heat in Las Vegas supposedly wears off a bit. 

Emma's undecided about whether to bring Henry. On one hand, it would be good for him to be there when they finally tie the knot. 

On the other hand, both of them passed through Vegas at some point. They both saw what it was like. 

"I bolted after two days" Emma says grimly. "The hotels didn't feel any safer than the gutters for a teenager on her own". 

"Met a guy I was in the group home with there a few months after I bolted. Zach Martin, his name was. He said he was a card counting expert, and he could teach me and we would both be millionaires. He had been in juvie for theft, I should have known better. Less than a week, Zach gets grabbed on the back of the neck by a security guard. Zach wasn't a small guy, but this guy towered over him, he was like a giant. I guess they didn't see me, or think I was involved, so I ran. Never saw him again". 

The sheer luck that makes the decision for them comes in August, when Emma runs into Susan at the grocery store. 

Emotion floods her, when she realizes its been over a year since she's seen her, and when they were living out of the car, it was mostly just to get her mail. It turns out that Susan won't be in the city much longer.

"My father just passed away, and my mother doesn't want to live by herself. She was a little bit upset when I had Noah, that's why I moved out in the first place, I guess it turns out grief heals a lot of wounds". 

"What are you going to do when you move back?"

"Take back my old job and try to move up". 

"Where's your old job?"

"Disney World".

"Seriously?"

"I worked in one of the restaurants there through the end of high school and what I did of college. It was pretty great."

"What happened?" 

"I got pregnant. I moved in with the guy, his name was Jack. We were happy for a while. They I got pregnant with Juan, and I guess that was too much for him. He bolted and left me alone. I should have known better than to trust the guy who played the Queen of Hearts. My parents were still sore at me, so I moved here into a smaller, cheaper apartment, and got the job at the cleaners. Took any shift I could, we still wouldn't have been able to get by if my aunt hadn't loaned me a bit of cash to pay a private investigator to track Jack down and make him pay child support". 

Emma's a bit surprised "PIs do that?"

Susan nods. "The one I hired said that's mostly what they do. Cheating spouses, runaway children and corporate espionage". 

She pauses a bit, before more enthusiastically continuing, 

"Enough about me, what about you? You kids finally tie the knot?"

"We're heading to Vegas to in a few months, it seemed easier that way. We're just undecided now on whether we should bring Henry or not."

"When were you going to go?"

Emma tells her they were planning on mid-late October. 

"Pick the days, and let me take him for that time. I should be all settled in by October."

"Oh we couldn't..."

"Nonsense, you two were lifesavers for me, it's the least I can do to pay you back. My mom loves kids, and all the Halloween stuff will be up in the park. If you want to get him more comfortable with the idea, come over in a few weeks and help me pack up for the move". 

Emma's still a bit unsure about the idea, and when she tells Neal about Susan's offer, he is too. 

"I know it's probably not a good idea, but I still feel like he should be there with us". 

The decision ends up being made for them when they help Susan load up the moving truck. The drive to Orlando is just under four hours. Hardly grueling, both Neal and Emma could drive double the time without breaking a sweat. 

It makes Henry really upset though. He spends both legs of the trip cranky and fussy, unswayed by attempts at stories and car games. 

When they get back into Tallahassee that night, Neal puts him to bed and Henry tells him "Don't wanna leave in the car". 

When he comes back out, he tells Emma, "I think Henry remembers living in the car, I think that's why he doesn't like being in it very long". 

"Damn" Emma says, reminding herself to donate to the swear jar, "I didn't think kids could remember that far back."

"What was your earliest memory?"

"Having to go to another family when I was three. I don't remember the first family once, just being told that they had real kids now". 

"That's horrible" Neal really had adapted to the no-swearing better than Emma, "Mine is just helping my dad. He was a spinner, so I had to help him carry big loads of wool. It was soft, but always made me itchy". 

"I guess if nothing else, Henry's memories at least involve us, even if it means he hates the car". 

Emma tells herself that repeatedly in October when they drive him to Orlando. 

Neal's spent the last week letting him talk to Susan and the boys on the phone and showing him exactly on the calender when they should be back. 

Emma could only get a week off work, so they were planning to split the thirty hour drive into three ten hour days, and trade off driving halfway through. 

They decided early on to just save money by sleeping in the car. At least at this point, if they get busted they can just drive on. 

They stop back at the apartment, so that Emma can clean the bathroom. 

"If we're coming back from vacation, the last thing I want is to have to do chores when we get here". 

They pack all of their stuff carefully, and flip for the car. Emma gets it first. 

The first night, they park by the side of a road in Louisiana. It's at the edge of a swamp, and there are dozens of fireflies out when they park at dusk. 

Emma's stuck her head out the window. 

"Wow. I guess it's easier to appreciate how beautiful some places are when you don't have to risk sleeping outside". 

"You've slept in a swamp?"

"No!...have you?"

"...Once. It wasn't fun". 

It takes them the better part of a whole day to drive through Texas. Neal complains the whole way. Insists that the dry, flat climate is unnatural. 

"I miss the forest, Henry should be able to learn to climb a tree". 

"Tallahassee has trees" Emma insists. 

"Not real trees". Neal replies. 

The second night, they park in New Mexico, and make a discovery. It turns out the area around Albequerque gets really, really cold at night. 

Emma shivers, tugging the blanket tighter over herself. 

"I almost forgot what cold was. Wouldn't believe I didn't even get out of Maine until I was old enough to run away". 

Neal's lips are almost blue. 

"I miss the snow in winter, but not the cold. Maybe we should have splurged and gotten a motel tonight". 

"No," Emma says, pressing herself closer to him. "This isn't half as bad as that night in Washington". 

"Oh god, that one where we ran out of gas and had to walk to town?"

"Yeah, that sucked beyond belief". 

It's that perspective, that really makes this little road trip different from their lives before. Knowing that they could stop to sleep if they wanted to. Emma being able to stick her feet out the window without fearing attracting the wrong kind of attention. Taking an hour to explore (what on earth is a Stuckey's?) without it being to case the joint. 

They make it into the city in late afternoon, early enough to get a quick dinner, stop by the county clerk's office for their paperwork, then check into their hotel. 

It's just like Emma remembers- bright, loud and full of drunks. 

From his chair by the window in the burger place, Neal looks around, disgusted. 

"I can't believe this is supposed to be the marriage capital of the world". 

"I can" Emma replies "Alcohol, cheap sex, irresponsibility. The promise of no consequences. Stupid people who don't realize what they're doing". 

Still, the hotel room is pretty nice. It's hardly high end, but is has a nice bed and a big TV. 

Once they settle in, Emma calls Susan's mother to talk to Henry. 

"He seems really excited about Disney World" Emma remarks. 

"It's good this happened then, I can't imagine we would have been able to take him ourselves". 

They order ice cream sundaes and eat them while watching a movie in bed. 

"Sure you want don't want to go out? Spend your last night as a single man out on the town?"

Neals snorts, "With no friends? Besides, my single man years were pretty awful. On the other hand..."

He pulls a six pack of beer and a bottle of champagne from a paper bag near their suitcase.

"Pick one, we'll save one. One for pre nuptial revelry, one for post nuptial celebration". 

"Beer now, champagne's too classy for revelry". 

And so they split the six pack and spend their last night unmarried watching some terrible B movies on a network that Emma's never heard of. 

The next day is beautiful outside. Warm and clear, and not humid in the slightest. It's a Tuesday. It's a Tuesday, and Emma's actually feeling good. The free breakfast might be doing a lot, but most of her feels like she just might be happy. 

The chapel the hotel runs is on the roof. On one hand, it has a sunlit view of the Vegas skyline. On the other side, gray concrete. 

They picked the cheapest package- one photo, a small bouquet, recorded music. None of that matters to Emma. An off-duty desk agent agrees to be their witness before she leaves for the day. 

Emma bounces a bit putting on her dress, not wanting to spill anything on it. Her shoes are just cheap sandals. She can't deal with up-dos, so she just braids her hair as neatly as possible. Her earrings are her favorites; white clips that she'd lifted as a teenager. 

They end up having to break tradition a bit because Neal can't figure out his cuff links, and wants to know if he can skip wearing the suit jacket. 

"No way, without the jacket you look like a young mob boss". 

The empty chairs are sort of sad. This clearly isn't a drive through venue- its one that expects a few guest. But whatever. 

Emma's bouquet is a few small yellow rosebuds and ivy. She can hold it in one hand, and feels herself crushing it in unexpected nerves as she makes her way to the altar (or whatever it is). 

The officiant looks like just another hotel employee; early twenties, spiked hair, wearing a bow tie. 

He goes through the usual spiel, Emma's face still frozen. 

"And if there's anything either of you wish to say, now would be the time."

Neal surprises her, by reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a fold up piece of paper".

"Emma, as you know, I spent most of my life wandering. When other people didn't leave me, I left. I never had a home, and I never thought I would. I never thought I deserved any of it. But then I met you. And not only did I find someone who I wanted to spend my whole life with, to make my home, but she made it feel like something I deserved. You, and Henry, are the only home I will ever need. Thank you, so much Emma, for loving me enough to make me think I could love myself". 

Emma's opens her mouth a bit, but no sound comes out. Her cheeks are hot with tears. She sniffs once, wipes her face with the hand not holding her bouquet, and replies. 

"I've spent almost my whole life alone, or close enough. No one ever wanted me, and I wasn't wanted anywhere. I often felt like no one would care if even existed at all, and if they didn't, why should I? Thank you, for loving me, and for making me feel like I matter."

Neal's eyes ever have a hint of shimmer, when the officiant (whose eyes are a little wide, like he didn't quite expect this) announces, 

"I now pronounce you husband and wife, you may kiss the bride". 

Emma doesn't give him the opening. 

They had picked the cheapest ceremony so they could splurge a little and have dinner in the hotel restaurant afterwards. 

It's not fancy enough that the menu reads like a list of random ingredients, but its far more than either of them has spent on a single meal in ages. 

When Emma finishes up the last bite of their dessert (a seasonal pumpkin cheesecake that she would never have ordered were this not a special occasion), she comments. 

"I still haven't decided if I'm going to change my name yet or not". 

"I thought that was an artifact from the days when marriages were for business transactions?". 

Emma's smile quirks the corner of her lips. He does listen to her rant. 

"Its just- Swan isn't even really MY name. I don't know my family's name. The Swan family didn't keep me. If it meant something to me, it would be easier". 

"If it affects anything, Cassidy isn't my name either remember. It could be something new, something for the both of us."

"True," Emma pauses, "I'll probably put it off, since it requires so much paperwork. Getting my driver's license was a pain in the ass enough."

"Yeah, you are kind of a terrible driver". 

She pokes him with her fork. 

"All of my documents had to be court ordered. I had no birth certificate, no SSN at birth, they had to be assigned". 

Neal reaches across the table to take her hand. The cool weight of their rings solidifying the moment.

"Just two ghosts, no idea where we came from, no idea where we're going". Neal muses. 

"Legitimized only by each other". 

Later that night, after a few hours of (indulgent and extremely thorough) sex, Emma is splayed on the hotel bed on her stomach, and Neal is drawing on her back with a felt pen. She's comfortable, extremely. Also content, sated, sleepy, happy. All those good adjectives. 

Once he's completely covered the planes on her shoulders, Neal reaches and grabs onto her wrist, and says,

"You should come into the shop someday, let me fix this as your wedding present. Make it less..."

"Amateur? Juvenile? Like tipsy mistake made by a teenager?"

Laughter again, "I could try to work into something bigger". 

Emma pushes her face into her pillow. 

"If you want that to be my wedding present, I guess I should show you what I got you". 

Neither of them had discussed wedding present, separately deciding they were one of those strange additions that didn't mean anything. But Emma had had an idea and been sitting on this looking for an opening for a surprise. 

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a bundle of papers held together with a rubber band. 

"These are brochures and class schedules for every community center in Tallahasee, and the community outreach classes at the college. I called each one, and you only need positive ID to register for classes. They have everything from watercolors and figure drawing to 3D design classes." 

Emma lets out a squeak when Neal bear hugs her and she flops back onto the bed. 

"Is that a 'thank you, awesome present' reaction?"

"Very awesome indeed". He says. 

\---

It's a few weeks later. Everyone's returned home, Neal and Emma content and ready for a return to routine, and Henry, bouncing and excited, talking about how he met Tigger and Stitch. 

Emma had been organizing some stuff she found in a box, when something slipped out. 

When she leans over to pick it up, it catches her eye. 

Neal is walking past her towards the kitchen and asks, "What did you find?"

It's the yellow legal pad. 

"Oh god, I haven't thought of that in ages". 

It's true, they haven't had as many milestones to collect. And Neal has moved onto to drawing on any other surface he could find. Maybe their dreams had to be deferred into the real world.

"Put our marriage license in there, it's as good a folder as any". 

Emma does, wraps a rubber band around the whole bundle, and puts it back in the box.


	12. Epilogue?

"You ready?" 

"No, but go ahead". 

Emma grits her teeth and Neal switches on the tattoo gun. It doesn't hurt nearly as bad as the needle version, but she'd been pretty drunk them too. Neal had flat out refused to let her drink to prepare for this one, as he put it "Drunk people won't stop moving and bleed way more". 

So she grins and bears it. But as the lines emerge, the little flower becoming just one in a field on a forest floor that comes to life on her arm, it starts to feel worth it. 

-

One of the benefits to being on campus all the time is that there's always someone willing to babysit for cheap. Worries about both of them going to school at night while working melt away when Emma meets her classmates and realizes how desperate a pre-pre law student who's class load is too high to work is for a few extra dollars. 

Neal takes well to watercolors and oils. He obviously can't go for anything degree-seeking, but he insists that his skill is improving, and the stuff he does and hangs around the apartment become almost professional looking. 

Emma was never made to be a student, but she pushes her way through the criminal law and justice systems classes required. After she calls Susan to ask her for her contact name, and with luck and persistence, manages to clinch a short internship that the law dictates. 

She mails in the application for her private investigator's license the day Henry starts kindergarten. When it comes in the mail, the card reads Emma Cassidy. 

\--

Henry, it turns out, loves school. He comes home each day with new stories. His teacher compliments him on his enthusiasm and friendliness. At the end of the first week, he comes home with an armload of library books and an insistence that he already found a best friend and can he please go over to her house next week?

Her name is Tiana, and she lives with her mother in the apartment above her mother's tailor shop. Her family is from New Orleans, and her father is away in the military. The shop is only a few blocks from the apartment that they rent now that they can afford something with two actual bedrooms.

Emma watches them play a little bit jealously. Tiana's a smart and brave little girl. They're both fond of make believe and adventure stories. Emma had never, really, had a best friend. And the old fairy tales had never been any kind of comfort to her. 

Neal loves watching them, because he insists that its amazing that kids play pretty much exactly the way the ones he knew when he was a child did. 

"The stories have changed, and they have more toys, but we always pretended we were great people who saw amazing lands and magic. The only difference was we knew it had some amount of reality for us, even if we might never get to live it". 

More importantly, it means Henry has a place to go when Neal's at work and Emma has to leave the city. 

\--

Emma bullies her way into becoming a partner of established Tallahassee PI Victoria Peretsky. There would be no way for her to afford her own office space as a newbie, and she has no desire to work for a large corporate firm.

Emma does her research. Peretsky is a borderline middle-aged ex-cop who still wears shoulder pads and chain smokes. She specializes in philandering spouses and has a reputation as a bit of a misanthrope. And also one for a long waiting time. 

So one day, Emma dresses in her business best (covering her, now two complete half-sleeve tattoos), and delivers this proposition; 

"Give me your runaways, give me missing adults. We'll split bail jumpers- they're easy money. I'll lighten your case load and won't undercut what you're known for". 

And as much as Peretsky is known for "catching that cheating bastard", Emma becomes known for "finding your drugged out sister who ran away". 

It breaks her heart sometimes. Pretty much everyone of the young women she finds feel like dark mirrors of what she could have turned out like. Many refuse to return, some from shame, or guilt, others stubbornness. The kids are worse. She takes more than a few photographs for battered fourteen year olds and gives them instruction on how to approach the police before leaving them back home. Sometimes she wonders if anyone would have ever cared enough to get someone to find her when she was that age, but when she sees some of the kids, she guesses that that might not be a good judge of love. 

But she's good at it, it turns out. She has extremely good intuition, and is good enough at telling when people are lying that Henry insists that it must be a super power. 

__

Even when they're doing fairly well, some habits never change. 

After a field trip at the end of second grade to see a play, Henry insists that he wants to be an actor. 

A few weeks later, Neal tells her at home that he let Henry sign up for the local children's theater's camp that summer. Emma almost cries when she sees the price. 

"Emma, it's fine. The rent's paid, the utilities are paid. We have groceries. Nothing is broken, or about to break, we even have some savings. Henry deserves to get to do the same things other kids do". 

Emma wipes her face and admits "I guess it's kind of hard to stop thinking like that when you've never had money before". 

"Why do you think I still buy cereal in giant plastic bags with cartoon penguins on it?"

But Henry loves it, and they promise to come at the end of the summer for the show the camp is putting on. It's Peter Pan that year, which makes Neal unexpectedly grouchy. 

"Please don't try to convince me Peter Pan is real". 

"He is. Total asshole". 

So Emma just rolls her eyes and goes back to helping Henry find his prop sword. 

\--

A few things happen in the last year and a half before they end up leaving Tallahassee. 

First off, Neal is approached by a former customer named Mark Rutherford. Turns out he's an author, who is seeking an illustrator for a series of books he was working on and had been impressed with the work Neal had hanging in the shop. 

"Do I even want to know what you did on him?"

"Pretty sure it was his girlfriend's name"

"Is it still there?"

"He had someone else fill in the heart". 

"Sounds like a real forward thinker". 

But Mark insists that he'll split the royalties with him, and keep his name off the books. 

"Are you going to do it?"

"Are you kidding? This is pretty much all I've ever wanted to do, and if it means that tattooing gang symbols on skinheads can become a side gig than all the better". 

The first book in the series is a retelling of the Little Mermaid set in the Caribbean. They end up taking a lot more day trips to the beach for "inspiration". 

"Not going to claim you already know how everything should look cause you've been there?"

"Nah, our village was close to a trade harbor, but it was rocky, no real beach, and no sea creatures that I knew of". 

\--

After Emma's twenty-fifth birthday the mysterious letters start coming again. 

Instead of postcards, this time they're photographs. 

A clock tower, a line of houses, shops on a street. 

And one of a sign, reading "Storybrooke Maine". 

Emma rubs her eyes in frustration. "What are we going to do?"

"I guess if we want them to stop, next year, we go". 

"Neal, that's crazy. The only evidence we have of this so called "curse" is the rambling of some guy neither of us know, and some things you remember from growing up! Even if you're right, and magic is real, how does this August guy know about it? How does he know anything about us?"

"What does it matter Emma? What harm could finding out do? Even if August is crazy, we still get a vacation in a little town in Maine. And if we don't we'll always wonder what could have happened". 

Asshole's got her with that one. Emma does hate dangling threads. 

"Besides, we've got a whole year to think about it."

\--

The last thing that happens is unbeknownst to both Neal and Emma. 

One Saturday in October, when Neal is off running some errand, and Emma is cleaning their closets out, she asks Henry to run down to the mailboxes to see if they got anything that day. 

Henry bounces down the stairs. His birthday was on Tuesday, and he was wondering if he could convince his mom to let him have his party arcade after school like a classmate had had earlier that year. 

This was what he was thinking of when he opened their mailbox and found a large package. 

A large package addressed to HIM. 

He looked at the address again. There it was, "Henry Cassidy-Swan, apt 5c". The name was a tip off- all his school forms read that, even though Emma had just been using Cassidy for a few years. Maybe it was from some relative he had never heard of? Other kids at school got presents in the mail from aunts and uncles and other people they never saw. Just because his parents didn't mention them, they had to have them too right?

He walked back up to the apartment, leaving the other pieces of mail on the kitchen counter. 

He went in his room and shut the door before tearing off the paper. 

It's a book, a large, leather bound book, unlike any he'd ever seen before. 

At that moment, Emma knocks on his door, "Henry? What are you doing?"

"Playing Mom! Mail's on the counter!"

"Remember, you have to clean under your bed today, or you don't get your allowance this week!"

"I remember, I'll do later, I promise". 

When she leaves, Henry runs his fingers over the gold embossed cover, that reads "Once Upon a Time". 

"Cool" he muses, flipping it open to start reading.


End file.
